Too much "tech" in the title ... And be ready for a bunch of text ...
Whatever, I have wanted to do something about the Warframes and how they could be powered. But I think I'd rather clean up with the Technocyte Virus and maybe a little bit nanotechnology in general, coz I think that the Technocyte, as part of the "Origin Story" of Warframe needs a little bit more understanding.
Alright, this should be common knowledge, but do you know what a (biological) virus really is? It's a mere strain of DNA, covered in proteines and lipides (just for protection). It Has no own ability to move, but it is often carried by fluids or gases. And when the virus comes to a living cell, it invades this cell and uses its DNA-strain to overtake the functions of the cell, usually to build a bunch of new viruses. Much like "copy & paste inserted virus". A specific kind of viruses, called retro-virus, has the potencial to manipulate the invaded cell's own DNA, thus practically transforming the cell into something new.
So far about biology, here is a little excursion on nanotech. Todays usage is mainly made up from materials with properties coming from its nanostructure, so usually its molecular structure. Examples are the lotus effect or especially carbon nano fibres.
The interesting thing about nanotechnology is that you make things extremely small. For example the threads of a cloth can be made extremely small by using strings of carbon nano tubes. This gives an extremely resistant fabric, but this is currently too expensive for mass production. There is also the idea to use monomolecular circuitry. This means that you use wires only one molecule thick. Of course, most electronical parts still need a bigger structure to work (i.e. most gates), but if you don't have a quantum computing device, incredible small electronics are still pretty awesome. Here, optical computing also could be discussed, but that would lead away from the main topic.
So, you have a biological enemy and want to win a war against this enemy. And you want to use mass destruction weapons, what is usually even more evil than waging war instead of just settle conflicts with words, discussions and compromises, like us grown ups used to do.
Now, an especially sinister way of mass destruction is biological warfare, which usually only affects the living. Therefore, bacteria, viruses and biological toxins are used (if interested in this, google "dirty dozen"). I want to talk about the usage of viruses.
As we know, a virus cant move on its own. It is, per definition, not even a living thing. But as popular knowledge shows (Dan Brown: "Inferno"), a virus can be spread with an aerosole. For example over our planet, Earth. If we would use a specifically for this task developped retro-virus, we could manipulate the whole planets population's DNA this way. So, what are the limitations of this? Actually, there are none! You could programm the virus in such way, that it re-programms specific parts of the DNA, for example parts that only a specific group of living creatures or humanbeings has. You could make every corn in the world infertile. You could kill all horses. You could give all black, or white, or whatever-they-look-like-or-specific-traits-they-have people get diabetes. Or worse, as the still relatively harmless HIV shows us.
Of course there are limitations and restraints. But these are few and get even fewer the more you research.
But how does this all fit into Warframe?
Well, we have seen, that the Technocyte Virus transforms living beings into something else, with various final outcomes. So, the Technocyte is probably biologically very flexible. It forms nearly any imaginable vessel to fight us. How can a virus have such possibilities?
Some of us might have played the game "Crysis", with it's "Nanosuit" and Nanobot-brought biological weopons and "Nano-Viruses". Sorry, pals, but I think most of this is bullshit. Even if it would be possible to build robots an nano-scale (usually called Nannites), they would be pretty stupid, just because they couldn't contain enough data to "think" in any dunno-how-small circuitry. A lot is possible, but there are limitations between electronic computing and molecular dimensions.
BUT you could make something like Nannites by giving a living cell the ability to tranform itself into various forms. In this case, limitations of data capacity are not such a big problem, because you could use the DNA as data media, which it practically is, as it contains the instructions for metabolism. And if you give this cell also the possibilities of a stem cell ... I don't say this would be easy, but it would be possible. You practically create Bio-Nannites.
As it should be known, there are not that many differences between a living creature and a machine circuitry is pretty comparable to the nervous system, and sometimes, with a little work, compatible (i.e. that old women who used a robot arm to drink coffee), therefore, melding flesh and steel, as Salad has recently done, is not such a big deal. Well, actually it is, especially with current technologies, but research can solve this problem, too. And will solve this problem, probably soon.
Back to the Technocyte. Most likely, it transforms cells into Bio-Nannites with the order to consume more flesh, thereby transforming this, too, and to reproduce itself this way. Therefore it usually produces various cheap vessels, which we have seen as the Infested. So, you could say, that the Technocyte is a bioweapon on rampage.
How does this further fit into the lore of Warframe? Well, I guess, our Warframes are also made of Bio-Nannites, but probably a better programmed and more complex version that would explain the general immunity to the Technocyte.
Well, discuss! What do you think about this?