What the hell actually happens to a human body when it becomes a zombie?

[LabRat]

The other day, I posted some thoughts about the Big Bang experiment, the frustrations of my own research and some work my colleague is conducting with investigations into dopamine. I've also bemoaned the lack of live specimens. There is simply too much we don't know about the creatures.

A recent article has talked about the emergence of different strains of infection. This follows my own strain of research into personalised reactions to infection and cure and the evolution of infection.

Following my thoughts on the work being done with dopamine, another article recently caught my attention. A protein is necessary to the regulation of the dopamine-releasing gene. With the contradictory evidence between lack of sleep and increase in dopamine, this now raises the question of whether zombies possess this protein or even this gene? And if not, why not? Does something fundamentally change when a human becomes a zombie? It is generally assumed that a zombie is simply a collection of dead tissue forced into animation by infection/voodoo and the control of a zombie brain but does the body undergo any changes during the process? Indeed, I start to wonder if we're even researching far too deeply by looking at the effects of dopamine. Does a zombie even possess chemicals in a dead body? If only these questions had come up far earlier when we did have a few available live specimens and if we wait until such time as we are able to obtain more, who knows whether it will be too late or not?