Half a month later.
Chen Chen stopped the instrument in his hand and stretched out in front of the Class 100 ultra-clean workbench, with a flash of excitement in his eyes.
"The induction of cloned fertilized egg No. 30 has been completed and can be implanted into the mother's body."
As Chen Chen stated, he began to fill in the experimental records. The experimental recorder worn on his head faithfully recorded every frame. These records will become the most valuable data in the future.
At this time, the entire experiment was still in the early stage, that is, the cloning stage. Chen Chen needed to use a micromanipulator to remove the nuclei from a total of thirty-six egg cells and implant other nuclei to form cloned fertilized eggs.
This is commonly known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer reprogramming."
The road to cloning technology has not been smooth, starting from the German embryologist who first proposed the concept of cloning in 1938, to the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996, to the discovery in 2012 that caffeine can increase the reprogramming success rate of primate egg cells. , human cloning technology has been developed for nearly a century.
To this day, cloning technology has long been mature and commercialized. Many people are willing to spend a lot of money to clone their deceased pets, and the emergence of profitable pet cloning companies is enough to show that cloning technology has become increasingly mature.
It is precisely because of this that Chen Chen was able to process dozens of SD rat cloned fertilized eggs in half a month.
However, technology maturity does not mean simplicity.
What is cloning
There was such a fable in the West:
It is said that there is a country where there is a poisonous spring water. Anyone who takes a sip will go crazy and become a lunatic.
All the subjects of the country drank from the spring water and fell into madness, except the king who did not drink it, so he did not go crazy with him.
As a result, the madmen across the country thought that the king had a mental problem, so they tied the king up and tried every means to cure his madness.
In the end, the king couldn't bear the torture and could only take the initiative to drink the spring water and go crazy with the people...
And cloning is a true reflection of this fable.
In a cell, there are dozens of materials such as cell membrane, cytoplasm, organelles, and nucleus. The most important of them is the nucleus, which is an organ that contains all the genetic information in the cell.
Generally speaking, if a cell wants to carry out activities, it must first report to the nucleus. After the nucleus approves, it will call the relevant genes, and then let a molecule called messenger RNA take the genetic information out so that the relevant organelles can execute their own tasks. Order.
It can be said that in a cell, the nucleus is the king, and the other structures and components in the cell are the subjects.
But if one day, scientists replace the king of the cell nucleus, especially the egg cell, humans will remove the nucleus of the egg cell and insert the nucleus of the somatic cell of the target to be cloned into the egg cell to replace it.
Then, scientists used electric current and chemicals to change the characteristics of the egg cell and transform it into a fertilized egg. It was like making the whole country drink poisonous spring water, and a scene from the fable happened.
The subjects asked the nucleus to give the order to develop the fertilized egg, but the newly appointed nucleus refused in his heart. After all, he is not the nucleus of the egg cell. You can't let me develop the fertilized egg and I will develop it. The nucleus of my body is mutated. Even if it turns into cancer cells and is eaten by white blood cells, it will never develop!
However, with the constant pressure from the subjects, this somatic cell nucleus finally felt "unable to offend" and had to change its position and transform itself into the nucleus of an egg cell.
At this point, the egg cell has successfully developed into an embryo, which will be implanted into the uterus of a mother, eventually giving birth to a cloned life.
And this life has the same genes as the owner of that cell nucleus flowing in its body.
Cloning successful!
Of course, the actual operation is still very difficult. Not to mention the damage caused by those chemical agents, just exchanging cell nuclei and egg cells is equivalent to a major operation.
After all, the egg cell needs to have its nucleus removed first, and then the allogeneic cell nucleus is implanted. If it does not die suddenly on the spot, the egg cell is already destined to die.
Only Chen Chen who took NZT48 could maintain such a high success rate.
At this moment, the door behind Chen Chen was knocked, and Wang Wei's voice came in.
"Chenzi, the second batch of clones was successfully born, and no hidden diseases have been found yet."
Unlike Chen Chen who was full of energy, Wang Wei's voice was filled with fatigue that could not be concealed.
"Okay, I'll be right over."
Chen Chen stood up and began to clean up the workbench in front of him. After freezing several precious cloned fertilized eggs, he rushed towards another room.
As soon as he entered the door, Chen Chen heard a squeaking sound, which was the cry of several newly born rat cubs, while Wang Wei and Xia Yin were gathered in front of the cage, observing silently.
The newborn rat's whole body was red, with only two black dots the size of sesame seeds in its eyes, and it squeaked like a red worm.
"Get ready to start, extract neural stem cells and make a cell suspension."
"good."
Wang Wei nodded. After a month of working together, Wang Wei had been completely impressed by Chen Chen's skills and perseverance. If it weren't for Chen Chen, not a single student in the entire Academy of Biological Sciences would have been able to do this.
Xia Yin on the side opened her mouth and looked at a bunch of new students who had not even opened their eyes. She looked hesitant and said, "Do we really want to do it now?"
"Since you have chosen this profession, don't feel pity." Chen Chen said lightly, "Just respect these animals who devote themselves to science."
"..." Xia Yin was silent.
Immediately, the three began to compare the genes of the cloned rat cubs and the original owners. After confirming that there were no errors, they executed them.
The poor newborn rat boy lost his life completely before he could even open his eyes to see the world.
"Is the iced PBS dish ready?" Chen Chen asked.
"Here." Xia Yin carefully brought a few petri dishes and looked at Wang Wei, "We can start."
"good."
Wang Wei took the petri dish, began to kill the rat cub on the operating table, and took out the brain tissue from the rat cub's body.
Then, he placed the rat's brain in an iced PBS dish, skillfully separated the hippocampus, put it in buffer, and then turned around again to handle the second rat like an assembly line.
Chen Chen walked to the position in front of Wang Wei, cut the hippocampus into fine pieces, added 0.25% trypsin, and then placed it in a 37-degree incubator. He asked Xia Yin, "Is the implant solution ready?"
"Ready." Xia Yin took the test tube from the shelf.
Chen Chen nodded, turned around and started working on the second petri dish that Wang Wei had handled.
Xia Yin waited aside for two minutes, then took out the petri dish from the incubator, put it in a centrifuge for separation, and then added planting fluid and pipetted to form a cell suspension.
"Didi!"
At this moment, the electronic alarm clock in the laboratory rang, and it was already nine o'clock in the evening.
"Okay, that's it for today's experiment."
Although there was still unfinished work, Chen Chen had no intention of stopping at all. He directly put down the tools in his hands, packed up his things, turned around and walked out of the laboratory.
"But we still have half an hour to finish today's work?" Wang Wei asked puzzled.
"Work and rest are the most important thing." Chen Chen shook his head and said solemnly, "If you want to work in this business 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 in confusion.
"Chen Chen is really strange."
Xia Yin complained, "When working, I race against time and am full of energy. One person can do the workload of several people, but once it's his own scheduled off-duty time, he doesn't want to work for one more second..."
"Maybe this is the quirk of scientists?"
Wang Wei shook his head, "Let's clean up and do the rest tomorrow."
"good."
Xia Yin nodded, and the two of them left the laboratory one after another.