To read from the beginning in order, just go here and follow the captions vvvv

https://www.deviantart.com/phyrexiavirus

Given that he is infecting a cell like he did in the beginning of movie canon, I wanted to take this time to point out how his explosive infection functions in relation to irl virology. Lytic replication - when a virion infects a cell, breaching the cell membrane and releasing its genome into the cell, which then replicates more virions until the cell eventually explodes, releasing the viruses to go off and infect other cells. I find it interesting that Thrax uses virions and replicates them like an irl virus. He isn’t an infected cell/carrier like I’d initially thought, given infected cells don’t have the mechanics to infect other cells like so ^^^. He seems to be a personification of a virion himself, like his own fictional entity that transports and controls his smaller counterparts without being bound to cells, sort of like a droid control ship controlling the droids on a planet in Star Wars. Handy, given cells wouldn’t be capable of being airborne. Tricky though in working out the mechanic of reproduction between ‘viral entities’. I’ll get into that later though 👀

Additional information - because the orange magma that erupts from a cell would be his virion particles, I think a cell can also be infected by contact with the magma (think the magma he spreads around the saliva boat in the movie) in a similar way to how humans get infected by viruses. So if they touch it, then cross contaminate themselves, they will end up exploding also. Jones stepped in some, but it was on his shoes and he likely didn’t touch it with his hands. It’s also how I see Thrax infecting such large areas, and why his infection seems to branch out in an almost fractal like way from the source. The virions replicate through the organic tissue spreading outward. What is interesting though, is how he is able to replicate them in inorganic materials also, like the plastic eyelash at the end of the film. More on that later also 🤘🏻