Chapter 12
Monday 2:06 p.m.
“Hi, sorry I’m late,” I say as I close the door behind me.
David turns around. “No worries, Jane, we’re just about to start. Please have a seat.” He then turns back to his computer again, hunched over, his head bent as he looks at the screen over his glasses.
I look around. Miyako and Frank are here, as well as Florence and Chris. They are all standing: David has only one chair in his office, and it’s the one he’s sitting on.
I shake my head at my distracted boss and stand next to Frank.
Chris is leaning lazily against the windowsill, glancing down at the campus alley. He looks as if he just walked in from an afternoon’s surfing session: sun-bleached, curly hair falling over his eyes, washed-out, loose T-shirt and light blue, flabby jeans.
Florence, standing next to him, has her lab coat on, her shoulder-length, mousy, blonde hair strapped in a tight ponytail at the back of her neck. When she laughs, her cheeks have adorable dimples, but now she’s serious as she looks at David’s back. She adjusts her glasses and folds her arms on her chest, waiting.
“I’ll be with you in . . . just one moment,” says David. I look toward him again. “Just let me . . .” The rest is a quiet mumble as he talks to himself.
We all just stand quietly and wait.
“There!” David turns to us with a smile and puts his hands on his knees, leaning back a bit. “I realize this meeting—well, this new project in general—might feel a bit awkward,” he says.
“A bit,” says Frank.
“I know, I know,” David says, raising his hands in the air, “but what I’m about to show you is quite something.” He stands up and says, “Please, follow me.”
We follow him to the elevator and pack ourselves tightly into the small cubicle. David presses his ID card against the scanner and pushes the button for the second basement floor. The door closes and we descend.
Frank looks at Miyako and then at me, pointing his thumb down, raising his eyebrows in a question.
I shrug. I’ve never been to the basement either. “David, what’s on the basement floors?”
“Extra lab space. Some rooms belong to other buildings in the campus.” The door opens and David walks out, turning right. We all follow him. “Two labs belong to our genomics and, I think, proteomics department. Not sure about that, though.” He turns his head to us, chuckling. “I just discovered them recently myself.”
Imagine working every day in a place like this. It’s like a dungeon. So glad I’m not in genomics! Or proteomics.
After another left turn, he stops in front of a solid metal door.
The scanner here is at shoulder level, so David unhooks his card and puts it against the scanner plate. The door unlocks and he pushes against it to open it. We follow him, a bit slower than usual.
I smell disinfectant and it reminds me of an indoor swimming pool. The hallway we entered looks just like any other hallway on the upper floors, only there are no familiar sounds of radios playing or people chatting. Also, the walls of the hallway on both sides are made of glass, and we can see into the brightly lit labs.
We all come to a stop.
The laboratories are packed with large blocks of robotic machinery moving around, performing the lab work, making a fine buzzing sound as their metallic arms shift positions, pipetting liquids from one set of tubes to another.
I guess these workers don’t mind the dungeon all that much.
“Oh, man, why didn’t I have one of those when I did my PhD? I would have finished it in half the time,” says Frank, looking longingly at the machines. Trust Frank to make fun of every situation.
David, a few steps away by now, turns around. “Come on, people!”
We follow him to the lab on the right.
The room we enter is not the lab itself but a pre-lab, a small room with a large window facing the lab. There are several desks here with computers aligned next to the lab window, and against the back wall is a large sofa.
“This is for brainstorming, right?” asks Frank, looking at David and pointing to the sofa.
I chuckle, and so do the others.
True, he’s making fun of everything, but what he’s really doing is releasing the tension, because I guess we’re all taken aback by being here, on a floor we’ve never been to, in a lab we didn’t even know existed.
David turns to us and leans on the edge of the desk. “Have a seat, guys.”
We all slowly sit down. Frank chooses the arm of the sofa to sit on and crosses his arms.
“So, what’s the project about?” David takes a breath and holds it in for a moment. Then he breathes out. “Well, rather than telling you about it, let me just show it to you.”
He sits in a comfy-looking leather chair, rolls it to the desk, and brings one of the computers out of standby. He logs in and a screen lights up, showing a software interface I’ve never seen before. At the top right of the window is an empty video screen. David starts a program and I notice movement in the main lab.
I look up. Through the glass, I can see a robotic arm reaching into a small incubator and bringing out a tray with a Petri dish. The arm makes a circular movement and places the dish on another robotic manipulator.
I glance back to the video window on the screen and realize the surface of the Petri dish is now in focus, a black-and-white live-image of the bright neon lights reflecting off the clear gel.
There is another metallic sound and I look to see what the robot is doing. The metal hand moves down so it is outside of our viewing space. Then it moves back up, now holding a small glass tube, sealed with transparent paraffin tape. The tube is half filled with off-white liquid. The edges of the glass are hazy with condensed water. The tube has been in a fridge.
The arm moves the tube to the stand. Then another sliding arm with a single pipette reaches to the tube, pierces the sheet, and collects several drops of liquid. The arm retracts the pipette, moves it above the Petri dish, and dispenses a single drop. Then it moves above the waste collection bin and the pipette is disposed of.
The machinery is now quiet.
David moves away from the screen to give us space to look. “Just watch,” he says quietly.
The Petri dish is empty.
What are we supposed to see?
But then, a moment later, I see some faint light spots appearing on the gel. They look like bacterial cells starting to form a young circular colony.
I frown.
Did I not see them before?
I move closer to the screen. The small round shapes are suddenly a little bit bigger. And bigger again.
A minute passes, and the shapes are now almost the size of a dollar coin.
And they keep growing.
This can’t be . . .
I blink a few times and look closer.
No! This is . . . this is amazing!
We are all now so close to the computer screen that our heads almost touch as we stare in amazement, watching the fastest-growing bacteria we have ever seen. In a few minutes, the surface of the growing gel is entirely covered in bacterial growth—there is no free space left on the Petri dish.
The machines move again; the mechanical arm takes the dish away and drops it in the waste collection bin.
We all straighten to look at each other. No one talks.
David turns his rolling chair to face us and lifts his arms up in a question. “So? Don’t you have a million and one questions?”
“Why do they grow so fast?” I ask before anyone else, though I’m sure they all have the very same question in mind.
David nods once and starts. “It’s a series of unique mutations in the DNA polymerase, and extensive transcription and translation changes, as well as a large number of ribosomes and heightened levels of protein production. Every step a normal cell usually takes in order to multiply is simply taken faster. In addition to that, many of the processes needed for division are running in parallel, unlike in normal cells. As a result”—he points to the lab machine—“this strain completely covers the Petri dish in less than two minutes.”
We are silent for a few moments, still coming to grips with this reality.
“Um, David? What kind of cells are these?” asks Chris. “And why are they in a sealed lab?”
“Good questions, Chris. And amazingly, they both have the same answer.” David clicks on a website. “These cells were found in hot geysers in southwestern Iceland. They belong to the Thermus family, which is why the temperature of this entire sealed lab is set at one hundred and fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. We would cook if we worked in there ourselves. And it’s useful having a machine doing the work for you, don’t you agree?”
Frank nods in confirmation. “That’s good. That’s great, actually. I truly appreciate their commitment to high temperatures.”
I frown and lean forward in my seat so I can see him better. “What do you mean, their commitment to high temperatures?”
Frank looks back. “I mean the fact that this strain grows only at high temperatures. Imagine if they grew so fast at room temperature? Or even worse—body temperature?”
“Frank.” I shake my head. “Ease up. It’s only Thermus.”
“I know. I know.” He puts his palms up in defense. “Still, one hundred and fifty-eight is, as I said, just right.”
I smile and look back through the glass window into the lab.
“And why are we here, David?” asks Florence, her voice deep and calm. “I have to say, it looks pretty awesome, but this is not just for show, right?”
We all look back at David.
“You’re right, Florence. Your job, guys, is to find a way to stop the growth of this strain.”
“Wait a second!” Chris raises his hands. “I don’t understand. Why are we here? Why not hire an entirely new team to study this? Why us?”
David lowers his head and gives a barely noticeable nod.
“The project started about half a year ago, and it was run—oh, by the way.” He lifts an index finger and scans us all. “This, all of this, is confidential. You’re not to talk about this project with anyone else. Is that clear?”
I want to suppress my frown, but I think it comes out anyway. “Why?”
“It’s the rules.”
“Whose rules?” jumps in Frank.
“The company that funded this project wants this kept highly confidential. At least until publication.”
I guess that makes sense. If I had something as big as this, I’d want it kept highly confidential as well. “So, David, you were saying?”
“Yes, Jane. As I said, the project started about six months ago and it ran under the supervision of Dr. Rosenberg.” He pauses, pinching the base of his nose above his glasses and looking at the floor.
I glance at the team. We all know what happened, but David nevertheless explains.
“As most of you have probably heard, Dr. Rosenberg died a few weeks ago. She had a congenital brain aneurysm that wasn’t discovered until it ruptured. She died of a brain hemorrhage.”
David told me this two weeks ago. It had been such a shock. I wasn’t close to her, not at all, but . . . it didn’t fit. People don’t just die.
In movies, maybe.
In books, too.
But not in my life. Not here . . .
“Due to the tragic incident, she . . .” David’s voice becomes rough, so he coughs once to clear it. “She could not finish the project, but the company that funded the research asked me to continue her work.”
He looks at us. “So, here we are.”
“What about”—Florence looks at all of us—“the people who worked on this with her? Dr. Rosenberg didn’t do all the lab work herself. Where are they?”
David shrugs, then shakes his head. “She had two assistants, but they went back home right after she died.”
“Home where?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
Chris picks up on Florence’s idea. “Well, maybe we can contact them, ask them for assistance.”
David nods once. “Sounds good.”
“All right. I’ll see if Kevin can get ahold of them,” adds Chris.
“David,” I start, “why did they choose you to continue her work?”
He laughs behind his mustache. “Funny you should ask that, Jane. You see, when Evelyn got involved, she . . . well, she couldn’t tell me a lot about the project, obviously, being protected by confidentiality, but she needed a bit of extra help, so she asked for you.”
I raise my eyebrows, staring back at David. Stunned speechless.
“She asked if you could run a side project that might help her with this one. And since you were just finished with your previous project, it was a perfect fit. This was the blocker experiment—the one you’ve just completed.”
I was running a project for Rosenberg without even knowing? My frown deepens. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“First of all, I couldn’t. Evelyn asked me to keep it a secret. Second, I didn’t know myself. About any of this. She just asked for help. And”—David shrugs—“it was Rosenberg, you know, I couldn’t turn her down. No one could.” He smiles.
I shake my head. “But still. The project doesn’t make sense, David. I’m working on Streptococcus. These,” I say, pointing with my hand to the robot lab, “are Thermus. Their blockers—their sensors—are completely different.”
“Yes, I realize that, Jane. But what’s important is that the principle works. You found another way to stop bacteria from growing.” Then he turns to the others. “And in general, guys, so are all of you. Everyone is working on a principle that might stop bacteria from growing. Think about it: Frank, antibiotics and its resistance. Florence, bacterial DNA polymerization and its mutations. Chris, protein and building block synthesis. All that you need to know to crack this project is right here.” He gestures at us with his hands.
“Um . . .” Miyako raises a finger. “Why am I here?”
David points his thumb back to the machines. “Because you are the expert in liquid handling.”
Miyako looks at the liquid-handling machines and nods. “Okay, makes sense.”
“So, you said we need to find a way to stop their growth, right?” I say.
“That’s right.”
“Couldn’t we just lower the temperature?”
“We could, but—we need to find another way, using your areas of expertise. I want you guys to throw everything you’ve got at them.”
“So, what do we know about these, these . . . crazy-grow cells?” asks Chris.
Crazy-grow cells! Brilliant! I wink at Chris, giving him a thumbs-up. He winks back.
“Everything that Dr. Rosenberg found is here,” David says and rolls with his chair to the far end of the desk, where several folders are stacked on top of each other in a pile. He picks them up and hands one to each of us. “You can work with this, and then add your data as well.
“Here,” he continues, picking up five silver memory sticks, “is where you should record your data. Please, make sure that they never leave the institute, all right? It’s all part of the confidentiality agreement.”
Frank snorts. “As if I’d want to take my work home.”
I laugh, and Miyako shakes her head.
David smiles as well. Then he turns around and picks something up from the desk. “And here are your new ID cards.”
We all reach out and pick the one with our name on it.
Florence is the last one. She looks at it, then turns it around to look at the back. “These look different than the ones we had before.”
“And they are different,” David explains. “You need these to access the basement levels, as well as to enter the robotics labs. They’ve been given to us by the company that funded this, and let me tell you, it is really, really well funded, I mean, so well funded that it will keep many subsequent projects running too. So, as I said, this company is on a tight schedule, and—”
“What’s the company called?” asks Chris.
“I’m sorry, Chris, I signed a special NDA and I can’t disclose that. So, as of now, this project becomes our first priority.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” says Frank. “Why can’t we keep working on our own projects in parallel? I mean, if there is a break in this one, I’m sure we can fill the gap and do an experiment or two on our old projects, right?”
“Francesco?” David looks at him above his glasses. “What break are you talking about? These cells grow so fast they won’t give you time to do anything else. You’ll be able to run multiple projects per day because of their speed.” He takes off his glasses and wipes his face with both hands. Then, he picks them up and looks from one person to the next. “Guys, just work with me, all right? You’ll have this project cracked in no time. It will run really fast, and you’ve got all the knowledge to pin it down.”
I look sideways at the team.
It’s an awesome project, I have to give him that. I just don’t like to be ‘pinned down’, without feeling like I have a choice.
David sighs. “Guys, I know it might feel like this is coming from out of the blue. But this is an amazing project. It’s once in a lifetime, trust me. And when it’s finished, it’s going to sell well. Really well! I mean, Science, Nature, PLOS—take your pick.”
Oh . . . I tilt my head to the side, frown slowly disappearing. Well, when he puts it that way . . .
I nod. “Yeah, why not? Might be fun.”
David shakes his head as he taps his knees and stands up. “Fun? It’s most likely the best project you’ll have in your life. Fun . . .” He heads for the door, but then stops and swings back around. “Oh, and keep me in the loop. We’ll have team meetings at the beginning of the week as usual, but you guys will most likely see progress daily, so keep me updated. Yes?”
“Sure, boss,” says Chris. The rest of us nod.
“Very good,” David says. “Good luck.” And then he leaves.
After several moments with all of us looking at the door, I’m the first one to snap out of it. I pick up the folder David handed to me and start paging through.
“I’ll check the growth curve first,” I say. “And then I guess I’ll dive into blocking sensors.”
“Can’t you use the same blocker reagent you used for Streptococcus?” asks Miyako.
I shake my head. “No, unfortunately not. Blocker-sensor interaction is kind of like a lock-and-key system. A blocker can only sit on one specific sensor, and the sensor proteins are strain specific. Which means that Streptococcus has a specific sensor, and this one up here, this Thermus, has something completely different. I will need to design a new blocker from scratch.”
I continue paging until I find the genomics data of the strain. “Hey, guys, we have the genomics of the crazy-grow strain in here!” I look up at them. “That might make the whole thing a lot easier. I might be able to design a new blocker based on this data.” I glance at the folder again. “But it will take some time.”
Florence stands up, stacking the folder under her arm. “I’ll check the polymerization, then. Perhaps I can mess up the primers so the DNA synthesis doesn’t even start.” Then she turns to us. “Did he say ‘we’ll have it cracked in no time’? Because just building primers will take me a week or two. If it works on the first go.”
“It’s research,” laughs Chris, writing Crazy Gro under the official title on his folder. “Quick is a logical improbability. Even with these Crazy Gro cells.” He taps the folder once he’s finished.
“I’ll just throw everything I have at them,” says Frank, taking one of the memory sticks. “See if any of the antibiotics work.” Then he picks up a marker pen and writes his initials on the memory stick. “Oh, no!” He makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
“Look at that!” He shows me the writing on the memory stick and continues in a childish voice, “It’s all smudged!”
I smile and shrug. “You should have waited for the ink to dry.”
“Eh!” He makes a classic Italian capeesh gesture with his hand, then he turns to the others. “Can I trade with someone else? Mine’s broken.”
I laugh. “No one else has your initials, Francesco De Massi. You just need to live with it.”
Frank huffs, pretending to sulk.
I smile and shake my head, looking back at the window to the robot lab.
Miyako claps her hands once and says, “Okay, who wants to start today already?” She sits on a chair and rolls to the computer.
I open my mouth to speak, but Frank’s faster. “Me, me! Just need to prepare the reagents.” Then he turns to Miyako. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Perfect. I’ll get acquainted with the system in the meantime.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” says Florence. “Still some work to do in the old lab. And I need to make a plan on how to tackle this one.”
“Yes, me too.” Chris raises his hand above his head. “I’ll let you know when I have things ready.”
“Sure, guys. Jane?” Miyako turns to me.
I look at my watch. It’s past three now; it will be too late to start anything after Frank’s finished with his experiments here. “I’ll check with you tomorrow.”
She nods and turns to the computer.
I stand up and follow Chris and Florence, but then turn around, looking back at Miyako and Frank. “And hey, make sure you’re only doing science in here.”
“Of course, of course. What else?” She waves her hand at me, trying to hide a mischievous grin.
“Else the Big Brother might find out.”
Then she turns to me, a frown on her face. “Who?”
“The camera,” I say, pointing to the upper right corner of the room.
She follows the direction of my finger. “Right, good point. Thanks for telling me. Not that we would, you know, do anything . . .”
I laugh out loud. “Of course not, Miya! Where did I get that idea from?”
I shake my head at them, still chuckling, then glance one more time at the camera before I leave the room.