I Just Want to Be a Quiet Top Student

Microorganisms are the most widely distributed and numerous organisms in nature, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc. They are one of the oldest forms of life on Earth, the basis of all life, the life within life.

The cells that make up animals and plants first evolved from bacteria. Measured by the standard of carbon, a human being is the fusion of billions of bacteria.

"So it is no longer silicon that dominates the world, but carbon. Another name for our genetic engineering research project is: how to guide the direction in the carbon age." Shen Qi talked about his thoughts.

There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gene in total. There are one hundred trillion bacteria parasitic in the human intestine. They are normal microorganisms in the human body and are beneficial to the human body.

On the other hand, the three billion base pairs of human beings have been sequenced, but only 2% of the content encodes more than 20,000 human genes, and the remaining 98% is still a genetic puzzle that has not yet been clearly studied.

Shen Qi asked: "Everyone understands the basic research of the first step of our project, what specific work should we do?"

"clear!"

"understood!"

"Excited to try!"

"Can't wait!"

Everyone took active actions and arranged the biological laboratory of Shen Qi Research Center with enthusiasm.

Biology and chemistry are closely related, chemical protective suits, fume hoods, basic chemicals, utensils, instruments and equipment, just take the inventory of the central chemistry laboratory.

Hardware and software for gene sequencing and gene editing need to be purchased separately. With the widespread application of technologies such as next-generation sequencing software and CRISPR, its market price has dropped to a low level.

Han Meng spent a small amount of money to do big things. He used his professional knowledge to bargain with the instrument supplier, and bought the exclusive instrument for genetic engineering commissioned by Shen Qi for only 5 million yuan, saving 1-2 million yuan for the center, Yanda University, and the country. Yuan.

The "Genetic Engineering Research Project" planned by Shen Qi is divided into three steps. The theoretical principles relied on in the first basic research stage are mainly genomics.

The ancient shotgun method is still the mainstream experimental method, as is the PCR machine.

The new PCR instrument purchased by Shen Qi Research Center has undergone several rounds of upgrades, but its design principle is not fundamentally different from the first generation.

The rapid progress of genomics is thanks to Professor Yang Rui, the inventor of the PCR instrument, who is a pioneer in the Chinese biological world.

If the "Genetic Engineering Research Project" wins the final victory, please remember these six biological workers who are willing to dedicate their lives to science, they are:

Shen Qi, Han Meng, Cui Hualin, Du Yuan, Tang Yaxing, Wu Junqiang.

The six first performed PCR on themselves, tested and saved their DNA samples.

Then, the six heroes extracted their own skin cells and cultivated them into pluripotent stem cells through biological means to store ammunition for later research.

There are countless scientific heroes in history. For example, Australian doctor Marshall drank Helicobacter pylori to verify whether it is the causative factor of gastric ulcer.

Another example is the Peruvian doctor Ke Liyong. In order to verify whether the two symptoms are caused by the same cause, he cut the wart on the patient's body, drew the blood from the wart, and injected it into himself. Unfortunately, he died.

The experimental operation of Shen Qi and the other six people is currently relatively safe, and there is no danger to their lives for the time being.

The first research stage of the "Genetic Engineering Research Project" is divided into two sections: advanced organisms and microorganisms.

Genes are the link that connects these two plates.

While the genome as a whole is important, scientists are more interested in genes, especially those associated with human disease.

With the completion of the sequencing of all base pairs of the human genome, the pathogenic mechanisms of thousands of common diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, immune dysfunction, neurological diseases, AIDS, etc., have been revealed, but the number of patients is increasing more.

Why is this?

"Yeah, why is this? To figure out and answer this question, and give the public a reasonable solution, this is what we have to do."

Shen Qi and his doctoral students broke their genomic DNA samples into 30-100kp fragments, and then centrifuged them in a Cs2SO4 density gradient solution containing silver ions.

"Six subsidence zones were observed, and the density from low to high is L1, L2, H1, H2, H3, H4 (L=Lower, H=Higher)." Han Meng was doing the experiment skillfully.

"The G+C ratio of H3 is the highest, 8 times that of H1 and H2, and 16 times that of L1 and L2." Cui Hualin used the H3 component as a probe to in situ hybridize with human chromosomes, and then compared with the chromosome G band image For comparison, some basic data were obtained.

The initial work of the first research stage of the "Genetic Engineering Research Project" is relatively basic and routine.

The recombination rate of the long arm of human chromosome 21 is 1cM/Mb, while that of the short arm is 2cM/Mb. A similar situation occurs in yeast, although the yeast genome is 200 times smaller than that of humans.

The H3 components were mainly distributed in the light-colored region of the G band, and 43% of the H3 was located in the proximal telomeric region. Sequence analysis by Shen Qi's project team revealed that the single-copy ratio of H3 components is 50%-70%, and the number of genes contained in H3, H1+H2 and L1+L2 accounted for 28%, 38%, and 10% of the entire genome, respectively. 34%, the experimental results show that a large number of genes are concentrated in a limited area of ​​the human genome.

The initial experimental conclusions of Shen Qi's team seem to be no different from the data published by the international human genome sequencing organization.

Such basic experimental research is impossible for five doctoral students to obtain doctoral degrees from Yanda University.

Basic experimental research is just a warm-up, and the core experiments will follow.

"As I said just now, since we already know the pathogenic mechanism of thousands of diseases, why are there more and more patients?" Shen Qi asked this question again.

"During my years in the United States, I specialized in AIDS research. In order to prevent HIV from destroying immune cells and making carriers sick, we can use biotechnology to modify the genes of patients, or modify the genes of their offspring, making their offspring permanently Immune to AIDS. But this gene modification method has not been widely and legally used clinically. I think it is because some gene modification can cause unpredictable new lesions, and even directly cause death. This is what my supervisor and I mainly focus on How to avoid the hidden dangers brought by genetic modification to the greatest extent? Can genetic modification be absolutely safe and beneficial to human beings in essence? It is a pity that my mentor was taken away, and I returned in a hurry China..." Cui Hualin is good at using AIDS as an example to explain his academic thoughts. After all, there is a specialization in the art industry, and he specializes in this direction.

"I think Director Shen should have a countermeasure?" Cui Hualin asked with great interest.