Same Stack


A Same Stack is a lifeform found in the Overgrown Ruins.

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Databank Entry

Source: Scan a Same Stack

Protozooblast soros, a true slime mold of basal animal cells.

1. Basal mold

A slime of undifferentiated animal cells most closely related to the angel comb (Cecidia gamikos). May be an ancestor or even a reverted descendant. It feeds on decaying organic matter and possesses a unique defensive adaptation.

2. Genetic mimic

The same stack dispatches Proteavirus to harvest and return genetic material from nearby organisms, then expresses these genes as proteins which it secretes into the surrounding seawater. Most of the stack's energy budget is spent copying chemicals from other organisms.

3. Inbreeding depressor

The same stack's mimicry triggers an intense aversive response in other Protean life. This may be an evolved reflex against self-inbreeding and cannibalism: organisms do not want Proteavirus to infect them with copies of genes they already possess, since this could lead to health problems and sickly offspring.

4. Ideal lab specimen

The same stack's simple, fluent expression of other organisms' genes into functional proteins offers an ideal model to study the mechanisms of the Proteavirus.

5. The thing?

The existence of a flexible, free-living animal cell invites imagination. Could life on Proteus once have existed as programmable tissue—cells that traded genetic information constantly, taking new, protean forms as the environment changed? If genes did not depend on any particular organism to survive and reproduce, then why have stable species evolved? Is the unit of selection on Proteus—the form that Protean evolution acts upon—the gene, the retrovirus that carries the gene, the living organism that expresses the gene, or some complex interaction of the three?

Assessment: fascinating model organism.

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