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Anonymous
>>600568
It would; you just have to bear in mind that the cells have to have time to replicate and be replaced. Viruses don't alter existing cells, only the cells' DNA (or RNA? can't remember), so actual changes would only show up in the next generation of cells.
Natural viruses don't usually alter a cell in that way though; for instance the cold virus alter certain cells (usually in the lining of throat) simply to produce copies of the virus until the cell wall bursts, spreading said copies into the system. However, AFAIK there's no reason that a virus couldn't contain straight-up altered DNA.
Theoretically you could use it to turn a person into an animal, or into a clone of another person, if you could keep the body from destroying itself as the new cells were produced... This is what happened in the movie 'The Fly' (1980, Jeff Goldblum); the telepod spliced the two DNA strands together, but the effects didn't show for a week or so, when his body fell apart.
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