Science Geekism!

[teyla]

So, I've been wondering about the physiology of Time Lords.

We all know they're different somehow. For starters, there's the two hearts. Then there's all these acrobatics the Doctor keeps performing where radiation is concerned. How exactly does that organism work?

I'm gonna try and find a hypothesis. I can only base it on New Who, because I haven't seen the rest. If I find that this is fun, I might add to it as soon as I've watched classic Who.


Right, first of all, I went through my memories of the episodes and listed all the injuries the Doctor suffered during the last three seasons.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances:
The Doctor tells Rose that he burned his hand, but that the nanites repaired it. Only documentation of a lasting injury.

Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways
The Doctor absorbs the Time Vortex. It kills him, he regenerates.

The Christmas Invasion
The Doctor suffers from what I'll call Post Regeneration Syndrome, PRS. Shouldn't occur, the change "has gone a bit wrong". He mentions a neuron implosion, which is eventually cured by tea ("Superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for healing the synapses."). He keeps expelling energy in yellowish swirly clouds. Loses consciousness a lot. Cure apparently includes sleeping a specific amount of time. Poor health condition leads to one of the hearts stopping.

New Earth
The Doctor loses consciousness after inhaling some sort of chemical(?).

The Idiot's Lantern
Loses consciousness after being hit by a police man, loses consciousness after the Wire tried to suck him in.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
He falls from a considerable height and loses consciousness on impact (he survives the fall without a scratch, though).

Fear Her
He gets drawn into the picture of the little girl (but he is able to draw something himself. Whether the others could have done that and just didn't, or whether it's something only he could have done, is unclear.)

Smith and Jones
He absorbs a for humans deadly dose of gamma radiation and expels it without harm to himself or his environment. He gets his blood sucked out by an alien and is resuscitated via CPR. Lack of oxygen doesn't seem to harm him too much (even though he does seem worried when the facial plate of his helmet breaks in The Impossible Planet). Mentions that he got electrocuted by lightning on one of his travels.

The Shakespeare Code
One of the witches stops one of his hearts. It does affect him, although not kill him.

Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
He gets electrocuted with a charge that would have killed a human, loses consciousness.

The Lazarus Experiment
He plays the organ, after which his hearing is temporarily affected.

42
He gets infected with sun particles(?) that, if a human is infected with them, rewrite the complete cellular organism of the host. He can hold them off longer than humans can, it does affect him, though. He can apparently withstand very cold temperatures, as well as solar radiation, for a certain amount of time.

Human Nature/The Family of Blood
He turns himself into a human. He can't do that by himself but needs a machine to do it for him.

Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
The Master is proof that Time Lords can have psychiatric issues (psychosis, schizophrenia, megalomania). The Master cancels out the Doctor's ability to regenerate and ages him - apparently, Time Lords can make one body last almost indefinitely (if they don't go absorbing the Time Vortex or stuff like that).

Right. Now, there are certain things listed that sound very human, and others that sound very alien. So, I made another table! :D

Human

Time Lord

- burns his hand, can't repair it himself - loses consciousness after inhaling unknown substance - loses consciousness after being hit by a police man - loses consciousness after the Wire tries to suck him in - loses consciousness after a fall - seems to need oxygen for something - lightning electrocutes him - loud noises affect his hearing temporarily - Time Lords can have psychiatric issues (psychoses, schizophrenia, megalomania)

- PRS: neuron implosion, can be cured by tannin and free radicals (tea), expulsion of energy, one of the hearts stops, he sleeps a lot - survives a fall that would have killed a human without a scratch - can absorb gamma radiation and expel it in a harmless form. - blood loss seems to affect him only temporarily, might be curable by CPR - lack of oxygen doesn't seem to affect him as much as humans - when one heart stops, the other one apparently is sufficient to maintain the circulation until the first heart gets restarted - extreme electrocution makes him lose consciousness, but doesn't kill him - can withstand very cold temperatures for a certain time span (10 minutes) - can withstand solar radiation for a certain time span (5 minutes) - can use technology to rewrite his organic cell structure. - can make one body last for about 900 years or more

Now, before I go and figure out big hypotheses, did I forget anything? Can you think of any occasions when the Doctor got hurt/injured or reveals stuff about his physiology which I left out?

I'll be continuing this. Not right now, though, because I gotta go to bed. I've got an exam tomorrow... blergh xP.


Oh, I almost forgot: I won't be here over the weekend! Probably. I'm visiting with a friend, and I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to spare for the intarwebz. See you Sunday at the latest!

Comments

[aryshtin.livejournal.com]

Just butting in... :-)

Like facultative anaerobes. I wonder if this bypass system has a time limit.

If he were faculataive anaerob, it shouldn' be time limited. But you could be sure that it wouldn't be as efficient a system as the aerob system. But it really could make sense, since the oxygen in the human system is nothing much but an electron donor which during the course of metabolism gets reduced to water. Knowing that and assuming he'd have a very adjustable metabolism, he could practically do with quite a number of electron donors (and he eats, right? Then he would also need a carbon source like fat, sugar or some alien molecules.), he would only need certain amounts of different enzymes in his system that match his carbon source and electron donors so he'd be able to break it all down.

Many fungi and bacteria develop spores, so maybe that's what he does? And then he's sort of regrowing from the spore and does look different because of genetic recombination? (You know, chromosomal crossing-over and such...)

It's fun speculating about this... :-D

[teyla]

Yay! That's interesting. So depending on what he ate, his anaerobic system would function more or less efficiently, right? If he has the wrong carbon source in his system that doesn't match with the electron donor his anaerobic system is using atm, or that doesn't go with the enzymes his body produces at that specific time, the system wouldn't work very well.

But then, if it's connected to his enzymes, maybe it's an adaption process. In the beginning, it doesn't work all that well but it gets better the longer he uses it, because his metabolism adapts to the new electron donor and carbon source. Meaning that he could theoretically live under water, if he had time enough to adapt to it...

I'm totally taking shots at the dark here. Biochemistry was always my worst subject xD.

Hmm, I don't think crossing over and all that jazz would lead to enough recombination to create a completely different phenotype, would it? If you're working with only one set of genes? Also, it sounds like a process that could go very terribly wrong very easily. But then, it has to be something like that, doesn't it, because where does he get his new genes from when he regenerates?

How exactly does that spore thing work? It sounds intriguing.

[aryshtin.livejournal.com]

Meaning that he could theoretically live under water, if he had time enough to adapt to it...

Yeah, I guess. :-) (To be frank, I've never been that good at biochemistry either. *g*). I just heard that oxygen is in fact the electron acceptor, so I was wrong about that, but the principle stays the same, right?

With bacteria, the only problem with the alternative metabolism often is that they produce some (semi)toxic byproducts (like ethanol in Gärung) which kills stupid bacteria because they can't excape their surroundings fast enough (or because evil people put them in petri dishes), but the Doctor can actually move, so that wouldn't be a problem. And we don't know of anyone ever dying because of his toxic waste? Well, so this is probably all just bullshit. :-)

create a completely different phenotype, would it?

No, it probably wouldn't, not to that extent. I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same? He still remembers his past life and everything.
It could also be the same mechanism that enables us to have a huge diversity in antibodies in our immune system. They are made of several components that are separately encoded in the genome. In total, you have about, say, 10 genes for heavy chains and 20 for light chains which enables you to have 200 possible combinations. All this genes are arranged after one another in the genome, with the heavy chains being read in 5'-3' direction and the light chains in 3'-5'. The dna then folds back unto itself, cuts everything out in between that is not needed, and so the enzymes are able to read and translate every combination of heavy and light chains possible (because thorugh folding back, everything goes into the same direction again, which is some kind of failsafe, I guess). So that activates genes that were silent before and silence others. This leads to this high adabtability of the immune system to respond to before unknown threats. And I can imagine, if the doctor only changes his appearance, that this mechanism could be responsible. (We just did that properly last week in uni, that's why I just thought about that now.)

How exactly does that spore thing work? It sounds intriguing.

Ok, so microbiology was a little while back, so I don't remember the exact thing. But when bacteria etc. notice a change in their environment that threatens their survival, some of them are able to produce spores that have a very thick, unpenetrable membrane around them that can withstand extreme conditions (cold, heat, radiation and stuff) practically only contains dna and they have only the most minimal metabolism. Like that, they can survive and wait for the outside condition the get better, before the spore than starts regrowing bacteria. (It was somehow like that. *g*). But now that I think about it, it doesn't sound that possible anymore... ;-)

(I hope you get my babbling about all that stuff. It's gotten so late again today...*yawn*)

[teyla]

I just heard that oxygen is in fact the electron acceptor
Huh, really? I always thought oxygen was a highly negatively charged element, which is why it made sense to me that it'd be the donor. Or is it only negatively charged when it has already accepted the electrons? Grar, Chemistry. It always fails to make sense to me.

Ahaha, the Doctor polluting his environment by fermentation. I love it. Maybe that's why he can't do it for long. I mean, bacteria are tiny tiny things that don't need a lot of energy, but a huge, complicated metabolism like the Doctor's would probably put out a rather high amount of toxic waste. So even though he could avoid getting killed by moving and leaving the polluted area, his ethics forbid him to use his anaerobe metabolism too often, or for too long.

I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same
I thought that's what the phenotype is? The exterior looks of an individual? Can the exterior looks be changed as extensively as they were when Nine regenerated into Ten by things like crossing over etc alone? I've no idea, last time I thought about this was in grade 12, lol ;).

Oy, you lost me on the immune system. I know about heavy and light chains, but I've no idea about the whole genes thing. So you're saying the heavy chains are read 5'-3' and the light ones 3'-5'? I thought everything was always read 5'-3'? Hah, they always lie to you in uni. So what you're saying is that every variety of the 10 different heavy chain types can be combined with any variety of the 20 different light chain types, which makes for about 200 combinations? I think I got it so far - correct me if I'm wrong. But I didn't quite get the part about the silent genes. How does that activation thing work exactly? I think I like the theory - it would make sense. But I don't quite get it yet ;).

Hmm, the spores are fascinating, but I agree, it doesn't really fit for the Doctor. It's not his environment that changes when he's about to regenerate, but his own body that is failing. Usually, anyway. The spores sound like life pods that are jettisoned and wait out the danger, but the regeneration is something that happens quickly and without a lot of forewarning.

Babble on! It's highly fascinating :).