theory A Possible Mechanism for the Kandra Death Spiral

[skaa]

(Note: I am not a biologist. Don't base your school homework on the "explanations" found in this post.)

 

---

Do you know, the voice said, about the body’s remarkable defenses? Inside, there are tiny bits of you that men never see. Even surgeons don’t know of them, for they’re too small. It takes a refined taste to distinguish them, know them. What is it that your friend likes to say? Ain’t nobody what knows the cow better than the butcher?

...

If a tiny invader enters your blood, Bleeder said, the entire body begins to spin around it, to fight it, to find it and eliminate it. Like a thousand fingers of mist, like a legion of soldiers all too small to see. But what is very interesting is when the body turns upon itself, and these soldiers run wild. Free …

 

 

 

I was reminded of those lines while thinking about Vertigo's topic about kandra organ donation in the main Mistborn forum. The biggest problem with organ donation is the risk that the donated organ will be rejected by the recipient's immune system. This is because donated organs may have antigens that the recipient could develop antibodies for, making the body attack the foreign tissue comprising the donated organ. Antibodies are great when they help the body fight off unwanted pathogens, but they're not so great when they tag your newly attached heart as an "invader" that needs to be destroyed.

 

Bleeder also describes a phenomenon where the body attacks tissue that is truly part of itself. This is called autoimmunity. The reason why your tissues are mostly safe from your own white blood cells (under normal conditions) is because the white blood cells that secrete antibodies for your own antigens are disabled or destroyed even before they mature. At least, most of them are destroyed. Autoimmune diseases happen because the process of preventing autoimmunity is not perfect.

 

So, what if a kandra forces his whole body to experience a large scale autoimmune response? I think he'd be committing suicide, because even his quick healing won't matter if his own immune system is destroying his own cells. If strong acids could kill a kandra, I reckon leukocyte-triggered cytolysis could also do the trick.

 

The best part is that a Shard trying to control a kandra will find it really hard to stop that process as long as the kandra still has enough will to keep his white blood cells attacking until he dies.

 

What do you guys think? Is this a viable explanation for kandra suicide that MeLaan described and that Paalm demonstrated?

 

---

 

MeLaan shook her head at him, seeming bemused. “It can be daunting,” she admitted a short time later, “to consider eternity, as Harmony must see it. But anytime I get bored, I can just live a new life.”

 

“Put on a new hat,” Wayne said. “Become someone else.”

 

“Switch it up. Be bold where once I was timid. Be crass where I was respectful. Makes life interesting, dynamic.” She paused. “And there’s something else. We can die, if we want.”

 

“What, just like that?”

 

“Kinda,” MeLaan said. “Don’t know if you’ve read the accounts. They’re blurry about this topic anyway, but near the end of the World of Ash, Ruin tried to take over the kandra. Control them directly. Well, TenSoon and those in charge, they were really terrified by that. So they planned, and we all talked. And about a century after the Catacendre, we figured out a way to stop our own lives. Takes a little concentration, but sets the body into a spiral where we just … end.”

 

 

 

“Hush,” Wax said, pulling a second gun from her side and tossing it away. “It’s all right.”

 

“No,” she cried, grabbing his arm. “No, it’s not. I won’t be his again! I will be me, at the end!”

 

Bleeder’s trembling increased, her body bucking, as she held to his arm. He frowned as she kept her head thrust forward, meeting his eyes, weeping and shuddering. Thrashing.

 

“What are you doing?” Wax demanded.

 

“Dying. We decided it! We won’t fall again. We found a way out.” She could no longer meet his eyes, and she fell backward, spasming. Eyes dilating quickly, skin trembling against the bone.

 

Wax watched, horrified. He seized her arm. No pulse. She was dying. Killing herself.

 

 

 

[Aonar]

Sounds like a pretty viable theory. It could well be something like a sort of systemic, autoimmune cytokine storm. (Basically, an immune response that sets up in an uncontrolled feedback loop; resulting in swelling, extreme fever (and all the associated symptoms), fatigue, nausea, and substantial tissue damage in the associated areas.) 

 

While we can't be sure, obviously, without someone putting a question to Brandon, that definitely sounds very plausible.*

 

(*Take this with a grain of salt; the extent of my medical knowledge is from a high school biology course, frequent trawls through Wikipedia, and binge-watching House on Netfilx. )

[king of nowhere]

sounds pretty viable, and that said by someone with competence in molecular biology.

However, that does not prove that it's actually the mechanism. We don't know how much control the kandras have over their own metabolism at a microscopical level. Sure, they can change a cell from muscle cell to skin cell and viceversa, but can they change the sugar chains on the surface of cells that represent their biological tag? can they regulate the expression of a single protein in a cell?

If that is the case, they probably can just tell their cells to go in apoptosis, which would be a simpler, faster and less painful way to commit suicide.

[skaa]

sounds pretty viable, and that said by someone with competence in molecular biology.

However, that does not prove that it's actually the mechanism. We don't know how much control the kandras have over their own metabolism at a microscopical level. Sure, they can change a cell from muscle cell to skin cell and viceversa, but can they change the sugar chains on the surface of cells that represent their biological tag? can they regulate the expression of a single protein in a cell?

If that is the case, they probably can just tell their cells to go in apoptosis, which would be a simpler, faster and less painful way to commit suicide.

I did think of the direct apoptosis route, but directly telling your cells to die would probably lead to a much faster death than what Paalm experienced. Given how kandra claim to be of Preservation, I wonder if their cell-manipulating powers preclude commanding their own cells to die.

It took a whole century after the Catacendre for the kandra to figure out this suicide mechanism, so I feel that it must be something that requires detailed knowledge about how a specific process in the kandra body works. Paalm's little white blood cell analogy made me think that maybe kandra still retain the leukocyte-based immune sytem of their human ancestors. By studying how autoimmune diseases work, perhaps the kandra simply realized that they could induce their "soldier" cells to run wild and free, so to speak. That might be enough to overcome any Preservationy limitation that they have.

Of course, there might be other explanations. Maybe they discovered how to create fast-acting histocompatible pathogens, or something. I quoted Paalm's death scene in the OP. Does that give any clue as to which disease is being mimicked by the kandra suicide mechanism?

Edited January 25, 2016 by skaa

[king of nowhere]

it's exactly the timing that makes me think direct apoptosis could be more likely. Now, I am knowledgeable in molecular biology, but I am not a biology, so I don't  know how long a cell takes from the moment it receives the signal to "suicide" to the moment it actually dies. On the other hand, a rejected organ will still remain functional for a long time, while paalm died in minutes. I'd think death by autoimmune reaction would take longer than that. Unless the kandra could make large amounts of linfocytes, which would greatly speed up the process, and it is of course a possibility.

[ParadoxicalZen]

Could it be possible that the Kandra created an entirely new cell that's specific purpose was to kill themselves? We know they cannot replicate body hair (IIRC?) so there are some things they can't copy (Keratin etc.) but spit balling here. Has era 2 even developed some form of autopsy yet?

[ccstat]

The speed of Bleeder's death certainly argues for a fast-acting mechanism, which rules out cellular autoimmunity (like graft rejection) but definitely allows for the more generalized cytokine storm that Aonar references. That mechanism shares a lot with septic shock and induces multi-organ failure pretty quickly. (Usually more than just a few minutes, which is why we have medical interventions that often work for such things, but conceivably helped along to the crisis point by the kandra's ability to crank up the system.)

The apoptosis idea is a good one, and could be stretched to work, but the usual timecourse for that kind of cell death is hours, not minutes. Which isn't to say that organ function wouldn't be impaired much sooner than that if all of the cells got the "die now" signal at once.

I have nothing to support this, but my assumption while reading was that the death spiral affects kandra physiology directly, not the (usually human) bodies they are wearing. That way it couldn't be counteracted if the Shard forced them to turn back into goop before the process finished. That Bleeder is apparently able to fall off of one set of bones and reform a body on the next in just a few seconds suggests that gloopifying doesn't take long.

Thinking about this has given me some uncomfortable thoughts, though. Whatever its mechanism, how did the kandra discover this death spiral and confirm that it works? How many died, or nearly died, in their search for something that would act fast enough? A very disturbing avenue of research, if you ask me.

[skaa]

@ccstat: Autoimmunity is any immune response against a person's own healthy tissue, and a cytokine storm is a type of abnormal immune response. If a kandra could induce a cytokine storm, presumably it would be easier and much more efficient for them to do it as part of an autoimmune response (making their own tissue the target of the storm) rather than by having to introduce foreign matter into their bodies.

I've read that anaphylaxis (another immune response) has been known to kill within minutes. Again, I think the kandra could induce this type of immune response to target their own tissue. Imagine getting severe anaphylactic shock by making your own body allergic to itself.

[ccstat]

You are right--good clarification. (By "cellular autoimmunity" I meant cell-mediated. I tend to oversimplify.)

Thanks for bringing up anaphylaxis. That is what my mind usually jumps to when I hear "cytokine storm", even though that term applies to all sorts of non-anaphylactic situations too. I appreciate the correction.

[DrakeMarshall]

Well I mean, there are many ways one could kill yourself if you could reshape your body. One could just sever their brain stem and instantly be dead. Thing is, kandra basically just wear extra flesh in the formation of life, but I doubt that severing the brain stem of a kandra would even kill it. They have different biology underneath the apparently human system they create.

 

Perhaps the kandra makes the human immune system target its kandra biology.

[mattig89ch]

I got the impression, whatever what happening was more mental then physical.

 

Though I freely admit to my potential wrongness.  Just, the way she started the process, it seemed to me, to be more something in her mind then something in her created body

[DrakeMarshall]

Also we can consider the fact that the kandra are an engineered species. The kandra death spiral might just be a built in feature of their biology, not a clever trick with an autoimmune collapse.

[skaa]

Also we can consider the fact that the kandra are an engineered species. The kandra death spiral might just be a built in feature of their biology...

Sure, that's a totally possible explanation. I just prefer to use interesting facts when making Cosmere theories. It's more fun that way.

Edited January 27, 2016 by skaa

[DrakeMarshall]

Sure, that's a totally possible explanation. I just prefer to use interesting facts when making Cosmere theories. It's more fun that way.

 

Fair enough. Some things in the cosmere hinge on details anyways.