Guide to Virology

Despite measures to sterilise its space stations, pathogens still make their way onto NanoTrasen Space Vessels. Below is a guide on how to deal with them.

Virology 101

The first, and most important way to prevent 99% of infections, it's proper hazard wear, and knowing how to keep the infection from spreading.

Terminology

Virus - An infectious disease, almost always giving negative symptoms.

Infected - Someone who has a virus in their bloodstream.

Symptom - The effect a virus has on the infected.

Pathogen - An alternate name for a virus.

Antigen - A substance that can help create antibodies. Used for immunizing. Is always recorded as two uppercase letters e.g. PO

Stamm - A unique identifying number for an analyzed disease. Is always recorded as a four figure number following a hash e.g. Stamm #1452

Rate of Progression - How fast a pathogen's symptoms manifest, average is 100.

Symptom Strength - how potent the symptom is, only affects certain symptoms, especially ones that deal damage.

Symptom Veroisty - unknown.

Protective Equipment

The following will protect you, from the dangerous infections of space, each giving more and more (till total) protection against infection:

• Level-3 Bio Hood.
• Level-3 Bio Suit.
• Latex Gloves.
• Shoes (White shoes and Galoshes are the best).
• Internal air supply including Breath Mask or Gas Mask.

For those not in the medical profession, the following commonly available items will help reduce your chances of infection:

• Any internals hooked up to a tank and on.
• Gloves.
• Clothes.

Isolation

If you, or another crew member are infected, do not spread the infection further. Seek the isolation bay of the medical wing, or head to a room no one will enter but yourself and other infected.

Cleanliness

Cleaning blood spills from the ground will prevent contact contamination, make sure blood is cleaned from the floor at all time. Any blood splatter out there could hold a dreaded space infection. Contact a janitor if you see blood on the floor, do not interact with the blood if you suspect possible infection chance. You have a bottle of space cleaner in Virology to clean virology itself. If an outbreak gets out, make sure people are cleaning blood.

Mucus caused by infected people sneezing also carries the same problem.

Methods of Infection

The following are the various ways a disease can spread, keep this in mind at all times:

• Airborne - The most dangerous and quick spreading, if you are anywhere within the breathing area of the infected crew member, you have a chance to be infected.

How to prevent - Either Infected or Uninfected must wear internals, preferably both. As soon as an airborne virus is loose, get everyone on internals.

• Contact - Requires you to touch, been touched, or be extremely close to the source of the infection. The infection could be from a blood spill (all blood spills containing contact, or airborne, infections can infect through blood contact).

How to prevent - EVA and Biosuits prevent contact transfer, wearing one, isolate the infected crewmembers in Virology or the isolation ward in Medbay. Warn crew to avoid blood and each other.

• Infection - The infection has been forced into the infected crew member, they are not infectious themselves. The only way to spread these infections, is through getting infected blood directly into another crew member.

How to prevent - The easiest, just be careful of anyone with access to syringes, especially the Virologist. Supervised antigen (cure) creation recommended.

Viruses

Primarily, this is your job. Find a batch of a virus, analyze it, and then produce a cure. You also research and splice new forms of virus.

Equipment

You have a number of machines around virology which help in the both analysing, curing, and research viruses.

• Isolation Centrifuge - This machine takes vials filled with blood and isolates pathogens or antibodies. It will automatically detect whether a sample of blood contains either, and can be useful for telling which people are infected. It can then isolate the pathogen, producing a virus dish, or isolate the antibody, producing a vial of antibodies.
• Pathogenic incubator - This machine takes virus dishes made by the centrifuge, or from the samples in your lab and grows them. It requires diluted milk (virus food) to work however, so ask the Chemist or Chef or use the virus food dispenser in Virology. The machine will ping when the virus reaches a large enough size to be worked with. Radiating the machine may cause the virus to mutate and change one or more of it's symptoms. You can also add a beaker of blood to the machine and infect it with whatever virus dish is currently in the machine.
• Disease Analyser - Putting a sufficiently grown virus dish in here will analyse the virus and display the symptoms on a piece of paper and on examining the virus dish. Also allows the Disease Splicer to show what the symptoms you're splicing are. This will also add a virus to the virus database, allowing it to be named and detected by a medical scanner.
• Disease Splicer - Each virus has four GNA strands which control which symptoms it causes, and one race strand, which controls who can be affected by the virus. This splicer can isolate one of those strains and store it. This destroys the dish in the process however. You can then save the strand to a disk and transfer it to a different virus dish. This is how you can make your own viruses.

Growing a pathogen (virus) sample

This is how grow a pathogen (virus) on a dish for other uses in Virology.

Requirements

• Virus Dish

Virology starts with three of these in the freezer, more can be found obtained from a Virus Crate.

• Beaker

There are two boxes of beakers in Virology

• Virus Food

There is a Virus Food dispenser on the wall next to the Pathogen Incubator

• Access to a working Pathogen Incubator

Process

• If the Pathogen Incubator has any radiation in it, flush the system to remove it.
• Fill the beaker with Virus Food.
• Place the Virus Food beaker into the Pathogen Incubator.
• Insert the Virus Dish into the Pathogen Incubator
• Turn on the Pathogen Incubator.
• Once "Sufficient viral growth density achieved" you can eject the dish.

Mutating a pathogen (virus) sample

This is how mutate a pathogen (virus) on a dish to change either a symptom, the affected race, or the contagion type, and is decided completely randomly.

Requirements

• Virus Dish

Virology starts with three of these in the freezer, more can be found obtained from a Virus Crate.

• Access to a working Pathogen Incubator

Helpful Optionals

• Access to a working Disease Analyzer.

Process

• Insert the Virus Dish into the Pathogenic Incubator.

Virus food is not required.

• Insert the Virus Dish into the Pathogen Incubator
• Add radiation to the Pathogen Incubator, ensuring that the radiation meter turns red.

1,000,000 µSv minimum is recommended as it quickly runs out.

• Turn on the Pathogen Incubator.
• Once "Mutant Viral Strain Detected", one of the parts of the sample has mutated.

If you are mutating two samples at once, the way to tell which mutated is the infection rate will read "Unknown" on the Pathogenic Incubator's interface.

• Eject the sample and place it into the Disease Analyser to see what has mutated, check it against the previous Disease Analyser report.

Manufacturing antigen (Curing) the entire crew

This is how you cure a breakout of a virus, whether released by Virology, or a random event.

Requirements

• Infected person
• Radium
• Vial
• Syringe
• Beaker
• Access to a working Isolation Centrifuge

Helpful optionals

• Antibody Scanner
• Anti-toxin / Dylovene

Process

• Inject affected individual with Radium.
• Wait a while, then scan with Antibody Scanner.

If the infected individual has not formed antibodies, then wait longer.

Take care to give them antitoxins if they are in danger of dying. Radium is lethal! Only a living patient may form antibodies.

• Once the patient has antibodies, take a sample of their blood with a Syringe.
• Inject the antibody filled blood into a vial, all 15 units.

You can find vials in a storage box on the table in Virology.

• Insert the blood filled vial into the Isolation Centrifuge.
• Choose the antigen you require to be isolated. Most of the time there will only be one option here.

This is a good time to cure the infected of their radium poisoning with anti-toxin.

• Once completed, you will have a vial filled with blue antigen (antibodies).
• Inject 5 units of antigen into a beaker, and fill the remainder of the beaker with water.

There are two boxes of beakers in Virology.

You can use the sink in the dressing room of Virology for easy access to water.

• Fill a syringe with the watered down antigen, and inject any affected crew members to make them immune to the disease.

Alternatively, use the paper cups in medbay reception so people can drink the antibodies into their system.

If you require more antigen, take the blood of anyone who has the antigen, inject into a vial, and isolate again.

Immunising individual infected

Note this process is not recommended if there is more than one victim and any chance of spreading.

Requirements

• Infected person
• Radium
• Syringe

Helpful optionals

• Antibody Scanner
• Anti-toxin / Dylovene

Process

• Inject affected individual with Radium.

Take care to give them antitoxins if they are in danger of dying. Radium is lethal! Only a living patient may form antibodies.

• Once the victim's symptoms have subsided, they are cured.

Identifying an unknown pathogen (virus)

Only useful in identifying the symptoms of a virus, and should be conducted after the antigens are being safely handed out after an outbreak.

Requirements

• Infected person
• Syringe
• Vial
• Beaker
• Virus Food
• Access to a working Isolation Centrifuge, Pathogenic Incubator and Disease Analyser

Process

• Take a sample of the infected's blood with a syringe.
• Inject the antibody filled blood into a vial, all 15 units.

You can find vials in a storage box on the table in Virology.

• Insert the blood filled vial into the Isolation Centrifuge.
• Choose the stamm (pathogen/virus identifier) you require to be isolated. Most of the time there will only be one option here.
• Once completed, you will have a virus dish, insert it into the Pathogenic Incubator.
• Fill the beaker with Virus Food from the dispenser in the wall, and insert it into the Pathogenic Incubator.

If the Virus Food vendor is out, Chemistry can mix some.

• Ensure there is no radiation in the Pathogenic Incubator, at least 30 units of Virus food, then turn it on.

If there is radiation in the system, flush the system before putting in the virus food.

• Once the incubation is finished, the machine will ping "Sufficient viral growth density achieved.". Eject the virus dish from the Incubator.
• Insert the fully cultivated dish into the Disease Analyser.
• After a short wait, the virus dish will be ejected, along with a piece of paper listing the symptoms.

The pathogen/virus will be added to the station's database to be viewed from medical laptops.

See below for what each symptom's effects are.

Splicing

To understand splicing, you must know that every virus has 4 GNA strands. Each strand has a respective symptom related to it, in varying degrees of severity, 4 being the lowest, and first symptom to manifest, and 1 being the highest, and final symptom to manifest. The disease splicer allows you to replace GNA strands with other GNA strands of the same level.

The disease splicer has three functions, which allow you to modify viruses, allowing you to define which GNA strands they have. The first of these functions is utilising the splicing function, to copy a GNA strand from an inserted virus tray to the disease splicer buffer. This is done by selecting the desired GNA strand. Doing so will destroy the virus tray in the process, so be aware of this fact.

The disease splicer’s second function is to copy whatever strand it has stored in its buffer, to a disk. These disks can be inserted into the disease splicer, uploading their respective strand to its buffer immediately, and unlike in the case of virus trays, disks will remain intact upon uploading their strand.

The final function of the disease splicer is to apply the strand stored within its buffer, to a virus, replacing the current strand on the respective level of the buffer’s strand’s level. This is done by selecting the strand located in the buffer.

With these functions in mind, the process in order for you to develop your own virus follows these steps:

• Firstly, you must obtain a disk for each strand level that you wish to apply to a virus. This is where the incubator’s irradiating functions prove useful, as you can potentially generate every GNA strand you want, by mutating a base virus.
• Secondly you must obtain a virus upon which you will apply your desired GNA strands. It does not matter what the original strands are, as you will be overwriting them with your desired strands.
• Finally you must insert this dish into the splicer, and splice each strand from your disks, by uploading them to the buffer one at a time, and splicing them over the disease.

Once you have your final product, you can use the Cure Research Machine to create a beaker of blood containing the virus.

Symptoms

These are all the symptoms and their effect:

Stage 4

Gibbingtons Syndrome: Gibs the infected lifeform.

Radian's Syndrome: Deals radiation to the infected lifeform.

Dead Ear Syndrome: Deafens the infected lifeform

Monkism Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform into it's monkey version if it has one, otherwise it gibs.

Suicidal Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to attempt suicide.

Toxification Syndrome: Deals toxin damage to the infected lifeform.

Reverse Pattern Syndrome: Increases the body temperature and deals clone damage to the infected lifeform.

Shutdown Syndrome: Disables the limbs of the infected lifeform.

Longevity Syndrome: Heals the lifeform of organ damage, deals damage if cured, ages the lifeform by 8 years.

Greater Magnitis: Causes the infected lifeform to pulls anything not bolted down and all silicon units within 6 tiles of the infected lifeform towards the infected lifeform.

Kingston Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform into a Tajaran, will kill certain lifeforms due to too great biological differences.

Spontaneous Cellular Collapse: Causes the infected lifeform to produce polynitric acid and slowly break down.

Necrosis: Melts the flesh or exteriors of the infected lifeform and turn them into a skeleton.

Fizzle Effect: Gives the infected lifeform a sore throat and the sniffles.

Arachnogenesis Effect: Causes the infected lifeform to vomit up spiderlings.

Biolobulin Effect: Gives the infected lifeform the ability to projectile vomit unstable goo.

Toxin Sublimation: Causes the infected lifeform to randomly create plasma gas.

Stage 3

Fragile Bones Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeforms bones to break.

Hyperacidity: Deals toxin damage to the infected lifeform.

World Shaking Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform's vision to shake.

Telepathy Syndrome: Gives the infected ability of telepathy.

Lazy Mind Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to take braindamage.

Hallucinational Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to hallucinate.

Hard of Hearing Syndrome: Gives the infected lifeform bad hearing.

Uncontrolled Laughter Effect: Causes the target to laugh.

Topographical Cretinism: Causes confusion in the infected lifeform.

DNA Degradation: Causes the infected lifeform to take clonedamage.

Groaning Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to groan.

Lesser Magnitis: Causes the infected lifeform to pulls anything not bolted down and all silicon units within 4 tiles of the infected lifeform towards the infected lifeform.

Hyper-perspiration Effect: Causes the infected lifeform to sweat.

Elvisism: Turns the infected lifeform into Elvis.

Pierrot's Throat: Gives the infected lifeform a clownmask, produces spacedrugs, and causes the lifeform to Honk.

Horse Throat: Gives the infected lifeform a horsemask, causing the target to Neigh.

Space Adaptation Effect: Allows the lifeform to survive in space naked, and makes the lifeform almost immortal.

Shutdown Syndrome: Disables the limbs of the infected lifeform. (This is the only symptom which currently can occupy more than one stage)

Stage 2

Loudness Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to scream.

Automated Sleeping Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform drowsy.

Resting Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to collapse.

Blackout Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform blind.

Anima Syndrome: Gives the infected lifeform a cough.

Appetiser Effect: Makes the infected lifeform hungry.

Refridgerator Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to shiver.

Hair Loss: Makes the infected lifeform bald.

Adrenaline Extra: Produces hyperzine for the infected lifeform.

Glasgow Syndrome: Gets the infected lifeform drunk.

Gaben Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform fat.

Bearding: Makes the infected lifeform grow a beard.

Uncontrollable Bowel Syndrome: Gifts the infected lifeform with diarrhea.

Intranasal Hemorrhage: Gives the infected lifeform a nosebleed.

Respiratory Putrification: Causes to infected lifeform to cough blood.

Lantern Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to glow.

Stage 1

Coldingtons Effect: Gives the infected lifeform a cold.

Flemmingtons: Causes Mucous to run down the back of the infected lifeforms throat.

Saliva Effect: Causes the infected lifeform to drool.

Twitcher: Causes the infected lifeform to twitch.

Headache: Gives the infected lifeform a headache.

Itching: Causes the infected lifeform to get an itch.

Drained Feeling: Makes the infecte lifeform feel drained.

Watery Eyes: Causes the infected lifeform's eyes to sting.

Wheezing: Causes the infected lifeform to wheeze.

Full Glass Syndrome: Makes the infected lifeform optimistic with tricordazine.