Chapter 15
Tuesday 3:43 p.m.
I lean closer to the computer, checking the numbers one more time. Behind my screen and the large glass wall, the machine is moving, fast and jerky.
I shake my head. The numbers don’t make any sense.
I lean on my elbows and cover my mouth with my fingers, thinking. This is so strange. I know this happens in eukaryotic cells—mammalian cells, for example—but bacteria . . .
I’ve seen a few papers claiming that bacterial cells can actually trigger this process but I was not convinced.
I shake my head and lean back in my seat.
Frank is working at a desk next to me with a computer linked to the robotic machinery. He looks up from the computer to the machine as the pipettes keep moving around, dispensing liquids.
At that moment, Miyako walks back in with three cups of coffee from the coffee shop around the corner.
“Oh, just what I needed! Grazie, bella!” Frank bends his head back for a kiss. Miyako leaves a cup next to my computer, then walks over and kisses him, leaving another cup on his desk.
“Thanks, Miya!” I take a sip of coffee. It’s burning hot, but excellent. I put it down.
“So, how is everything going? Any issues with the programming?” Miyako sits behind Frank and looks at his screen.
“No. All seems to be working smoothly.”
“So I wasn’t needed after all.” She makes a pretend sad face, pulling the edges of her lips down.
“No,” I say. “It only means that you taught us very well.”
She smiles, back to her usual sunny self again. “How did your experiment go? Did you finish it?”
“Oh, yeah!” I laugh. “Talk about a Crazy Gro life cycle—it’s done within minutes!”
She laughs too. “At least we get the results faster, right? So did you find something?”
I nod slowly, looking at my screen. “I did, but . . .”
“But?” Miyako rolls her chair to me and looks at the data. “Huh? Am I getting this right?”
Now Frank looks at us as well. “What?”
“It seems that . . . it seems that these cells trigger the programmed cell death when they discover there’s no more food.”
“Really? So, tell me again, what happens normally?”
“Well, usually, after the logarithmic phase, the cells enter a plateau stage, where they keep their number the same for quite some time, before they start dying.”
“Perhaps their plateau stage is very short?” asks Miyako.
I shake my head. “I thought so too, but if you compare the stages of normal bacterial cells, and how much shorter they are in Crazy Gro, I should still see some of the plateau stage.” I turn to face them. “Plateau is normally the longest-lasting phase. I should have seen something of it, if it was there.”
“What does that mean? That they don’t enter this last stage of stagnation like other bacteria do?” asks Miyako.
I take a breath but don’t say anything.
This almost looks engineered. I mean, what kind of cell would just decide to die?
I shake my head again. “Look, even if they depleted the food resources, which”—I look back at the data—“it seems they did, they should still stagnate.” I turn back to Miyako and Frank. “Right?”
“Not following.” Frank shakes his head and rolls his chair toward us.
“Okay. Let’s just imagine a group of Crazy Gro cells in this Petri dish that just had their last meal, all right? Now, even if they don’t have any more food, those cells with full stomachs, so to speak, should still live for . . .” I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know, five minutes, perhaps, with this strain? But not zero minutes. I wouldn’t expect them to die immediately after consuming the last spoonful. You know what I mean?” I look at them.
They both shrug their shoulders.
“Maybe it’s the mutation?” says Miyako.
“What mutation?”
“The one that makes them grow so fast. Perhaps it’s a side effect, this lack of plateau phase.” She looks at me, then at Frank.
“Maybe,” I say, though to my mind, it doesn’t fit. Something is strange here.
“Hello, hello!” Florence walks in, carrying a piece of paper.
“Hi,” we say at the same time, all of us a bit distracted with our current discussion.
“Something’s wrong,” Florence says as she picks up a folder of Dr. Rosenberg’s data from the corner of the desk.
I turn toward her. “What is it?”
She shakes her head, comparing the paper she is holding with the pages in the folder. “It’s the same. I thought only my folder had the error, but it’s the same here.”
“Care to explain?” asks Frank.
She looks up at us. “So, I wanted to check the DNA polymerase and see if there’s a way to affect the primer binding, right?”
“Right,” I say, “to block the DNA polymerization so they never start growing.”
“Correct. Well, to do that, I need to look at the genomics data, see how the polymerase is built in this strain and then see if I can stop it from functioning. But”—she lifts the sheet of paper in the air and shakes it —“this polymerase, in fact, this whole genome, is Thermus!”
All three of us are still for a long moment, none of us understanding what she’s getting at, until finally it dawns on me. “You mean, the genotype we have here is just Thermus?”
“Yes!” Florence says.
“I . . . I don’t follow you guys,” Frank says. “Aren’t we supposed to be working with Thermus here?”
“Actually, no.” I turn toward him. “We are working with Thermus with a mutation. Meaning that if we have a genotype of Thermus only”—I point to the folder—“we actually don’t have the real genomics sequence of the bacteria we are working with right now.”
“Huh?” Frank says, adjusting his glasses.
“We are missing the mutation for the fast growth!” says Florence. “This genomic sequence is only Thermus. Normal, slow-growing Thermus. But—” she points to the folder “ —see? See the title? It says here it’s the fast-growing Thermus. Our Crazy Gro.” She looks at us and leans on the back rest of the sofa, the folder open on her lap. “Only it’s not. I compared the whole sequence to the bacterial database, and it’s just normal, common, ordinary Thermus. This is not the mutated strain.”
She closes the folder and puts it back on the desk, sighing heavily. “Uh, I don’t get it.”
“Perhaps it’s a mistake?” tries out Miyako. “Perhaps, by mistake, the data in this folder are really only for normal Thermus, but the real genomic sequence that Dr. Rosenberg did is, I don’t know . . . saved somewhere else?”
“Well, it’s a confidential project, so she wouldn’t save it on an open server or anywhere else where we or others can easily access it. No, it would have to be somewhere safe,” I say.
“Maybe David knows?” asks Miyako.
“He might,” says Florence. “I’ll check with him to see if he has access to some folder where Dr. Rosenberg saved her data.”
I nod. “Good. Let me know what you find out.” Then I turn to my screen again, thinking back over the previous discussion. “There are just too many open questions that should not be questions at all . . .”
“Oh, you have an open question, too?” Florence asks, paying attention to my screen.
“It seems that as soon as the cells deplete their food source,” I explain, “they go into a programmed cell death.”
“Really? Don’t they just stagnate for a bit?”
“No, Flo, that’s exactly the mystery. They don’t live for a second longer.”
“Strange.” Florence shakes her head. “I wonder why that is . . . well, maybe we’ll find out more once we have the genomics data. Frank, what about you? Any findings?”
Frank looks back at his screen. “I just finished the last batch of antibiotics, but all the ones that I used before do nothing. Zero.”
“Though that’s not entirely true,” jumps in Miyako.
“What do you mean?” I turn my chair toward her.
“Well—correct me if I’m wrong, Frank, but whenever you add your antibiotics, the cells do show a slight pause in their growth, but then after a delay of a few seconds, they continue at their normal pace. Isn’t that right?” She’s looking at Frank intently.
He shrugs. “Sure, but I don’t think that means much. I mean, normal cells die when you hit them with antibiotics.”
“It means something, Frank. It’s not unimportant,” I say.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Then I wink at him. “Yet!”
Miyako laughs, and, rolling his eyes, Frank says, “No false modesty here.”
I smile and turn to the computer.
Florence gets up to leave but stops at the door, leaning against the frame. “So, guys, we’re celebrating this evening, right?”
“Yes!” Miyako turns to Florence. “Bo-Bo Bar. Seven thirty. Good?”
Florence lifts a thumb. “I’ll be there.” And she disappears, the door slowly closing behind her.
I turn my chair to Miyako. “Is there anyone not coming?”