Genus: Evolving

Thirty Days Ago

“It worked,” Dr. Johnson said in amazement. He looked up from the microscope. “It’s been completely destroyed.”

His research assistant looked through the microscope in complete disbelief. Sure enough, she saw the same thing; the virus’ RNA protein sequence misfolded and was rendered dead by the introduction of foreign cells.

“Doctor, you’ve done it…” the research assistant said. “You’ve found a way to actually kill any virus…”

Nathaniel’s head felt like it was swimming. Seeing the results of years of work finally come to fruition in a living organism was a dream come true. His heart was beating fast and he wondered if he would faint. He quickly took nitroglycerin from a tiny pill bottle and allowed the substance to dissolve under his tongue.

He waited for a moment, though the excitement was hardly controllable.

“James,” Nathaniel started, once his heart returned to an as-close-to-normal-given-the-circumstances pace.

“Could you please get all the notes and experiment logs in order? We need them to all be in order by morning – I have to call the CEO about this. She’ll want to have an audit performed, and probably a news conference.”

James hurried to begin his double check of the paperwork. A quick glance over them revealed they were all up to date – minus a few signatures and some dates. Easy fixes when something so important was done.

Nathaniel took a deep breath before picking up the phone and dialing to the CEO, a real ball buster named Merle. She was known for being willing to do anything to claw her way to the top of the food chain. She didn’t care who she stepped on to get where she wanted.

Even the thought of talking to her made Nathaniel want to take some more meds to keep his heart from stopping.

“Merle Frost’s office,” her secretary answered the phone with a pleasant voice.

“Is Ms. Frost in?” he asked.

“I’m on the line already,” Merle interrupted before the secretary was able to reply.

The secretary promptly hung up.

“Do you finally have results for me or are you needing to waste more time and money?” she asked.

“We’ve had some very promising results. The proteins…”

“I’ll contact the news. Make sure all those disgusting animals are disposed of, and all that mess is clean.”

* * *

“Thank you for inviting us for this meeting,” Joanna, the journalist, started the interview.

They were positioned in the pristine laboratory. The cameraman was able to get a wonderful shot of the lab and all the equipment from science movies.

“Certainly,” Merle said with a warm smile. She had a fantastic camera presence; she was NexGen’s consistent choice for spokesperson.

“Please tell us about this groundbreaking discovery, as much in layman’s terms as possible,” Joanna prompted.

“Goliath was designed specifically for the testing with prions.”

“A prion; the infectious protein that causes Mad Cow Disease,” Joanna interjected, intended more as a question than a statement.

“Correct,” Merle was irritated by being interrupted, but her poise didn’t allow her to show it.

“For millennia, humans have been plagued by pathogens, and viruses have resisted treatments. Viruses are notorious for not responding to antibiotics, and the treatment is to “wait them out”, or just let them run their course.

But what if a virus can be destroyed at its source?

How does this relate to the prion?

As we just stated, the prion is an infectious protein that causes the proteins of the ‘victim’ to fold incorrectly. Misfolded proteins are, therefore, useless. This happens in the central nervous system, or CNS, and the animal or human faces a neurological disorder.

So scientists here at NexGen developed a theory; what if the protein were to be introduced into a virus? DNA or RNA are strands of proteins – the proteins each translate to the individual genes. The virus could be catalyzed into inactivating the proteins of the virus’ DNA, and leave it unable to infect.

Once that has been done, the virus is inactive, and then could be used for a vaccine against the virus. Retroviruses like HIV and Ebola could potentially be cured. Gone forever.”

Merle continued.

“But it needed to be tested in vivo, so it has been tested in jellyfish – without a nervous system, they cannot get infected by the prion. And we’ve seen the vaccine actually work.

The next stage in the testing of this vaccine will be preclinical trials, which will be conducted on mice and rats.”

“This is absolutely incredible news, this is practically a modern miracle,” Joanna said, after listening to Merle without interruption.

“How is the team handling such an exciting breakthrough?”

“They’re very excited. The project is being led by a young man not even out of college for his PhD yet; he’s even my son – James Frost.”

* * *

Nathaniel practically sprinted to his room, enraged. That child was barely passing his online PhD course. If not for his mother, he would have been released from the program. He couldn’t even figure out how to use an autoclave, much less develop this process.

And that woman… that woman… giving him credit. Calling him the leader of the team he handpicked based on expertise, passion, and even political beliefs…

But he had a plan. That child wouldn’t take over research he knew absolutely nothing about. Absolutely not. Nathaniel would destroy all the records of his work – leaving only his copies, naturally – and incinerate the working virus, and that dumb jelly fish that hung out in the lab. And then evacuate the lab. Only his password would stop the lockdown and enable anyone back into the lab – even if access would be valueless.

But first, his heart was starting to hurt, he needed to take another nitroglycerin before he had another heart attack. Hopefully he could get that child-proof cap off.

Now all he would do is wait…