My mind is becoming set on Malaria for the fascinating way it reproduces and the tricks it conducts in order to do this. While talking to one of my flatmates as well as Andy, the merozoite phase conjured up two inspirations: The Xenomorph and the Grey Goo scenario due to the way the merozoite surgically enters the blood cell, uses the cell's own body to replicate itself then reporduce to such a quantity that the host eventually bursts open, releasing thousands of merozoites to repeat the process in other blood cells.
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| Figure 1: The Merozoite enters a red blood cell much like a virus (Miller, 2011) |
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| Figure 2: Merozoite close up, the construction could be like that of a single-purpose machine (Bannister, 2000) |
The Alien/Grey Goo combination has given me the thought of using a Gigeresque style, with the components looking somewhat like machines as at the subcellular level the difference between "organic" and "mechanical" begins to blur (I was once told to think of mitochondria as cell-scale power stations and the Golgi apparatus as a cell-scale sorting office). These things use their hosts to make more of themselves, which is Grey Goo in a nutshell.
This might also give me a chance to build on the idea of using the shape profile.of a mosquito as the basis for something like an aircraft or a spaceship, to fit with the biomechanical theme.
Image References- Figure 1: Miller, H., numerous, 2011; [The merozoite enters a red blood cell much like a virus]; F6.large; available at http://www.pnas.org/content/108/32/13275/F6.large.jpg (last accessed 25 February 2015)
- Figure 2: Bannister, L., 2000; [Merozoite close-up, the construction could be like that of a single-purpose machine]; Merozoite; available at http://mpmp.huji.ac.il/maps/merozoite.gif (last accessed 25th February 2015)
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