This is one of the craziest ideas that has hit me in a loong time. Actually, this is the outcome of too much of 'mechanical regulations of cell transport systems' class assignments and a crazy conversation that I had with Ankur sometime back.
So what happened was, ankur was talking about taking over the entire world by inventing a mobile phone virus that will make humans (or whoever is using a mobile phone :) ) his slaves. He wanted to build a mobile phone application that will penetrate the human brain . So, being a mobile networks expert, he said he could device applications that will download itself into any phone that is on the network. He said, it was upto me to take over from there to penetrate the brain. :)
So, I was thinking. And this thought suddenly struck me when I was having my coffee with guru n vichika... (in case I didnt mention this before, I will very soon go bankrupt paying for this cuppa coffee at this 'potti' kade (baddi kottu) called java jitters near my lab! :)
Ok... coming back to the idea , technically speaking, there exists a transduction principle called mechanotransduction, where signals(information) are passed onto a cell system using mechanical forces. Now, in this class, I have also learnt that gene expressions are controlled with these mechanical forces. That is, if the system believes that certain proteins need to change form or shape due to some change in the body, a force is applied to the cell, which alters the gene expression. This change in the gene expression in turn will affect the protein synthesis.
Now, suppose, we can come up with a mechanical force that will affect a gene expression such that it takes the same effect as some deadly virus. Suppose we can build a mobile phone application that will produce these mechanical waves. Now, when the human actually places the phone near his ear, these forces could penetrate through the human ear cells (hair cells, gated spring model actually shows that this is possible) and the changed gene could now start multiplying as the cell starts replicating. Now, to ensure that the entire body is affected, we could take in a gene that sends signals to the brain through some other protein or signalling systems. Mission accomplished!!!
What a destructive thought! :)
When I was narrating this to vichika... another thought came up :)..... for the genome project to completely decode the human gene seqeunce, it might take another 10-15 years... by which the mobile phone technology itself might get redundant.... she said... maybe there could be 'telepathy' instead of mobile phone.... so I came up with another rubbish idea that could actually make telepathy possible ! :D next blog dedicated to that nonsense ! :)
