Half a month later.
Chen Chen put down the instrument in his hand and stretched in front of the clean workbench. There was a flash of excitement in his eyes.
"Fertilized egg number 30 has been induced. It can be implanted into the mother's body."
Chen Chen began to fill in the experiment records as he stated. The experiment recorder on his head faithfully recorded every frame. These records would become the most valuable data in the future.
At this time, the entire experiment was still in the early stage, which was the cloning stage. Chen Chen needed to remove the nucleus of a total of thirty-six egg cells with the help of a micromanipulator and implant another nucleus to form a cloned fertilized egg.
This was commonly known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer reprogramming".
The path of cloning technology was not a smooth one. From 1938, when German embryologists first proposed the concept of cloning, to the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly in 1996, to the discovery in 2012 that caffeine could increase the success rate of primate egg cell reprogramming, human cloning technology had been developed for nearly a century.
Today, cloning technology had long been mature and commercialized. Many people were willing to spend a lot of money to clone deceased pets. The emergence of profitable pet cloning companies was enough to show that cloning technology was becoming increasingly mature.
It was for this reason that Chen Chen was able to process dozens of SD rat cloned fertilized eggs in half a month.
However, mature technology did not mean simple.
What was cloning?
There was a Western fable that went like this:
It was said that there was a country in which there was a poisonous spring. Anyone who drank a mouthful would go crazy and become a lunatic.
All the subjects of this country drank this spring and fell into a state of insanity. Only the king did not drink it, so he did not go crazy along with them.
As a result, the lunatics in the country thought that there was something wrong with the king, so they tied the king up and tried to find ways to cure his madness.
In the end, the king could not stand the torture and could only take the initiative to drink the spring and go crazy along with the people...
Cloning was the true reflection of this fable.
In a cell, there were dozens of substances such as cell membrane, cytoplasm, organelles, and nucleus. The most important of these was the cell nucleus. This was an organ that contained all the genetic information in the cell.
Generally speaking, for a cell to carry out activities, it had to first declare to the cell nucleus. After the cell nucleus approved, the relevant genes would be called and then a molecule called messenger RNA would carry out the genetic information so that the relevant organelles could carry out its orders.
It could be said that in a cell, the nucleus was the king, and the other structures and components of the cell were the subjects.
However, what if one day, scientists replaced the king of the cell nucleus, especially the egg cell? Humans removed the nucleus of the egg cell and replaced it with the nucleus of the somatic cell of the cloned target?
Then, scientists used electricity and chemicals to change the characteristics of this egg cell, turning it into a fertilized egg. It was like letting the whole country drink poisonous spring water, and so the scene in the fable happened.
The subjects all begged the nucleus to give the order to let the zygote develop, but the newly appointed nucleus refused in its heart. After all, it was not the nucleus of an egg cell. It could not develop the zygote just because it was told to. Even if its nucleus mutated, turned into cancer cells, or was swallowed by white blood cells, it would never develop!
However, as the subjects continued to pressure it, the somatic cell nucleus finally felt that it was inappropriate to offend them. It had to change its stance and transform itself into the nucleus of an egg cell.
At this point, the egg cell had successfully developed into an embryo. The embryo would be implanted into the womb of a mother, and a cloned life would be born.
And this life, in its body flowed the same genes as the owner of that cell nucleus.
The cloning was successful!
Of course, the actual implementation was still very difficult. Not to mention the damage caused by the chemicals, just changing the nucleus of the egg cell was equivalent to a major surgery.
After all, the nucleus of the egg cell had to be removed first, and then the foreign cell nucleus was implanted. The egg cell was lucky that it did not die on the spot.
Chen Chen, who had taken NZT48, could maintain such a high success rate.
Just then, there was a knock on the door behind Chen Chen and Wang Wei's voice came in.
"Lil Chen, the second batch of clones has been successfully born. No hidden diseases have been detected for now."
Unlike Chen Chen who was full of energy, Wang Wei's voice carried a weariness that could not be concealed.
"Okay, I'll be right there."
Chen Chen stood up and began to clean up the workbench in front of him. After freezing a few precious cloned zygotes, he hurried to another room.
As soon as he entered, Chen Chen heard a squeaking sound. It was the sound of several newly born mice. Wang Wei and Xia Yin were surrounding the cage, silently observing.
The newborn mice were red all over. There were only two black dots the size of sesame seeds where their eyes should be. They squeaked like red worms.
"Get ready. Extract neural stem cells to make cell suspension."
"Okay."
Wang Wei nodded. After a month of working together, Wang Wei was thoroughly impressed by Chen Chen's skills and perseverance. If not for Chen Chen, no student in the entire Institute of Biological Sciences could have done this.
On the side, Xia Yin opened her mouth. She looked at the bunch of newborn mice that had not even opened their eyes and hesitated. "Are we really going to do it now?"
"Since you've chosen this line of work, there's no need to feel pity." Chen Chen said lightly, "It's enough to maintain respect for these animals that have dedicated themselves to science."
"..." Xia Yin was silent.
After that, the three of them began to compare the genes of the cloned mice with the original owners. After confirming that there were no mistakes, they executed them.
The poor newborn mice had lost their lives before they could even open their eyes to see the world.
"Are the ice PBS dishes ready?" Chen Chen asked.
"Here." Xia Yin carefully carried a few petri dishes and looked at Wang Wei. "You can begin."
"Okay."
Wang Wei took the petri dishes and began to execute the mice on the operating table. He extracted the brain tissue from the corpses.
After that, he placed the mouse brain in the ice PBS dish, skillfully separated the hippocampus, and placed it in the buffer. Then, like an assembly line, he turned around to deal with the second mouse.
Chen Chen walked to where Wang Wei was before and cut the hippocampus into fine pieces. At the same time, he added 0.25% pancreatic enzyme and placed it in a 37 ° C incubator. He asked Xia Yin, "Is the planting fluid ready?"
"It's ready." Xia Yin took the test tube from the rack.
Chen Chen nodded and turned around to start working on the second petri dish that Wang Wei had processed.
Xia Yin waited on the side for two minutes, then took the petri dish from the incubator and placed it in the centrifuge to separate. After that, she added the planting fluid and blew it to form a cell suspension.
"Beep beep beep!"
At this moment, the electronic alarm clock in the laboratory rang. It was nine o 'clock in the evening.
"Alright, that's all for today's experiment."
Although there was still work to be done, Chen Chen had no intention of lingering. He immediately put down the tools in his hands, packed up his things, and walked out of the laboratory.
"But we're still half an hour away from finishing today's work?" Wang Wei asked, puzzled.
"Rest is the most important thing." Chen Chen shook his head and said solemnly, "If you want to do this for a long time, you can't do it without a good body."
Watching Chen Chen leave, Wang Wei and Xia Yin looked at each other.
"Chen Chen is really a strange person."
Xia Yin complained, "He's in a race against time, full of energy, able to do the workload of several people, but when it's time to get off work, he's not willing to work even a second longer..."
"Maybe this is the quirk of a scientist?"
Wang Wei shook his head. "Let's pack up and continue the rest of the work tomorrow."
"Okay."
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