"Mr. Wei, why are you here?"
Xue Shen saw Wei Kang's figure appearing at the door from a distance, and immediately ran over with a humble smile on his face.
"I saw the report. It is said that your nano laboratory has produced samples of artificial blood vessels, so I was curious and came over to take a look."
Wei Kang said casually, looking around, taking stock of the situation in the laboratory.
The previously empty laboratory was now filled with people, and filing cabinets were placed in every corner.
All equipment and materials are placed very neatly, and the personnel are in their respective places, showing a tense and busy working atmosphere, which is in contrast to the chaos and orderliness in the equipment division and the vitality of the biological laboratory. Very different.
He nodded secretly in his heart, and couldn't help but feel a little recognition of Xue Shen's management ability.
Under the leadership of different people, each major laboratory will have its own unique style. This style cannot be copied and is difficult to imitate, but it will subtly affect every employee from the inside out.
As the boss, he is also an outsider. He can only watch with a cold eye and cannot intervene. Even if it affects the performance, the most he can do is change a director.
But so far, this management style has been quite useful, leading to an explosion of research results, which he is also happy to see.
As soon as Xue Shen saw the big boss coming to inspect, his desire for expression suddenly surged into his heart, and he immediately slapped his thigh and said:
"What a coincidence. The samples were made just two days ago, and I was just about to report it to you."
"Mr. Wei, please, let me show you this."
Wei Kang put on a lab coat, hat, mask, and gloves, and covered his whole body tightly before walking into the laboratory.
As soon as I entered the door, I saw several staff gathered in front of a large experimental table, busy non-stop.
He walked over and took a look. There was a simple machine on the experimental table. It could be seen that it was self-assembled. It consisted of several stainless steel shelves. It was filled with 500 ml format glass bottles and was processed through different pipelines. connect.
On the far right is a sealing device with four drawers combined together. It is densely covered with plastic tubes of different colors, making it look a bit messy.
"I declare that I withdraw the comment of being neat and orderly." Wei Kang looked over and felt dazzled, and couldn't help but complain silently in his heart.
Xue Shen followed closely behind, came to the machine, and couldn't wait to introduce it.
"Mr. Wei, this is a desktop automatic protein synthesis machine that we assembled ourselves. It can string together the amino acids that make up proteins within a few hours according to a predetermined program, greatly reducing the time required for protein synthesis."
"In this way, artificial proteins can be designed and manufactured by adding different amino acids, synthesized on demand."
"It's just that it's still relatively crude at the moment. It can only synthesize protein molecules within 300 amino acids, and cannot directly synthesize larger protein macromolecules."
Wei Kang was immediately in awe, and at the same time a little surprised, this was a bit of a big deal.
Although protein synthesis technology is nothing new, the fact that it did not use the most common gene recombination technology but assembled a machine by itself is enough to prove the strength of the project team.
"Maybe it's because genetic recombination technology is difficult to synthesize elastin molecules, so we adopted this method." He thought to himself.
Then he took a closer look at the machine that was rumbling and making a low noise. He really couldn't see anything, so he could only nod and praise it.
"It's amazing. Is the elastin molecule synthesized here?"
Xue Shen nodded and said proudly: "Yes, elastin molecules are synthesized by this machine."
"As we all know, elastin is the main component of elastic fibers. Elastic fibers are rubber-like elastic fibers that can be stretched several times and return to their original shape, so they are known as 'human rubber'."
"Elastin is found in large amounts in tissues, and can be found in the lungs, aorta, certain ligaments, skin, and ear cartilage."
"But the elastin molecule commonly found in living organisms is relatively large, with about 700 amino acids, and it cannot be synthesized by this machine for the time being."
"The elastin molecules we use are different from those in nature. The molecular weight is relatively small, only 218. The folded structure is also relatively special, showing a concentric ring shape, and there are unique interface designs between each other. This way Can be synthesized using machines.”
"We can cross-link them with each other through chemical reactions and stack them into nanonetworks. At the same time, we can add some cofactors to help the elastin fold, such as adding detergents or liposomes. The accessory peptides on its surface form a smooth film."
"Bah bang bang!" Wei Kang couldn't help but applaud: "It's really amazing. Please explain this magical machine to me in detail."
"Okay." Xue Shen stepped forward, pointed at different parts of the machine, and started explaining incessantly.
"This machine uses a solid-phase peptide synthesis technology. It only needs to add chemicals containing the corresponding amino acids to synthesize the required protein."
"At each step of the synthesis, the chemicals are passed through a heated reaction cycle containing a resin bed. After optimization, it only takes 1 minute to form each peptide bond, and the insulin precursor of up to 86 amino acids can be formed in an hour and a half. It can be assembled.”
"We conducted a detailed analysis of the synthetic insulin and the results showed that its function and structure are exactly the same as natural human insulin."
"In order to increase the success rate and find the best recipe for each reaction, we performed amino acid-specific coupling reactions under many different conditions and finally assembled a general process."
"The average efficiency of each reaction exceeds 99.99%. Even when assembling protein macromolecules with hundreds of amino acids, the difference rate can be reduced to less than 0.01%, greatly improving the success rate of synthesis."
"Currently, this machine is still a testing machine, and each reaction process requires manual operation by the experimenter, so they have to keep an eye on it at all times to make sure there are no mistakes."
"Of course, we are also continuing to optimize the machine to automate the entire manufacturing process so that after protein synthesis, the cleavage, purification and folding steps also occur without any manual intervention."
"After the optimization is completed, any experimenter can simply walk over and enter a protein sequence into the machine, and it will string these amino acids together, and by the end of the reaction, you will have the desired result. of any protein.”
"Wow!" After hearing this, Wei Kang felt a strange feeling for a moment. He asked curiously: "This seems to be completely different from commonly used genetic engineering technology. Is there any difference?"
"Of course it's different. This is a completely new technological improvement."
"You should know that most proteins found in the human body are 400 amino acids long, and there are only 20 types of these amino acids."
Xue Shen couldn't help but become excited when he saw Wei Kang nodding slowly, and his tone became more and more high-pitched.
"In fact, the polypeptide chain made of these 20 amino acids is probably the most versatile material on earth.
"As nanotechnology scientists, our most fundamental goal is to be able to use the diversity of protein polypeptide chains to construct arbitrary three-dimensional shapes."
When Xue Shen said this, his face was filled with a confident look overlooking the world, but he immediately restrained himself and regained his humility.
He laughed dryly and said: "Of course, we are still a little far away from this goal, and we are moving in this direction."
"Close down to the subject, protein synthesis currently uses recombinant genetic technology, where DNA molecules containing customized protein codes are implanted into microorganisms such as E. coli or yeast to produce large amounts of this protein."
"Insulin, as well as other biological enzymes, are manufactured using this technology."
"But this traditional genetic technology also has some shortcomings. The proteins that microorganisms can construct are relatively limited, and they can only produce small molecule peptides. They are powerless for artificial proteins that are not found in nature."
"Even large proteins are at a loss as they are built into unexpected folds and structures."
"Therefore, protein synthesis through chemical reactions is a better technology. It can not only synthesize macromolecular proteins, but also add artificial amino acids that are not found in nature to construct new artificial proteins."
"The shape of a protein is mainly determined by its amino acid sequence and environmental factors. Under the correct conditions such as temperature, pH, and salt concentration, the amino acid sequence will spontaneously fold into a functional three-dimensional protein structure."
"If someone is smart enough, they can artificially synthesize proteins from their amino acid sequences."
"Of course, protein synthesis is difficult because proteins fold into a series of transition states in chemical reactions. In real life, this folding occurs in milliseconds, or even microseconds if the protein is small enough. "
"So we still have a long way to go. The elastin molecule also has a special structure and can be cross-linked together, which is relatively easy. If it is a real protein macromolecule of 700 amino acids, we have currently realized it. There are still bigger difficulties.”
Wei Kang waved his hand happily and said: "It doesn't matter, you have to eat one bite at a time, and walk the road step by step. I feel deeply proud that you can achieve the results you have now."
"After hearing what you said, I am even more looking forward to the artificial blood vessel."
"Then," he rubbed his hands impatiently and said, "let me see a real biological artificial blood vessel."
"This is it." Xue Shen suppressed his inner excitement, carefully took out a glass dish, and displayed it in front of Wei Kang like a treasure.
Wei Kang opened his eyes and looked over, and saw a 5-centimeter-long fiber bundle lying inside the transparent container. It was slender and smooth, slightly transparent, with a yellowish sheen, and looked like a rubber band.
He chuckled and said, "It looks a bit unremarkable on the outside. What's the caliber of it?"
Xue Shen quickly explained: "This is a 4mm small-diameter artificial blood vessel with a very high technical content. It is mainly used in bypass surgery for coronary heart disease because the diameter of the coronary arteries is very small, between 2-7mm, and is very easy to block. The artificial blood vessels used must be below 6mm."
"We are doing performance testing this week, and its performance is very good in all aspects. The data is off the charts, it is simply a smash."
"This blood vessel looks very thin, but it is very elastic, has a strong anticoagulant effect, and has a very tight structure that will not bleed. In all aspects, it is much better than imported polyester artificial blood vessels."
"Actually, it's not that we can't do it more finely, but no matter how precise the surgical bypass surgery is, there is a maximum limit, right? Doctors wear magnifying glasses, not microscopes, and the smallest ones can only operate on blood vessels of three to four millimeters. This size It's enough."
As he spoke, he took out the tweezers, clamped the artificial blood vessel in the glass dish, and pulled it lengthwise.
The artificial blood vessel had been stretched a lot, visible to the naked eye, until it was more than ten centimeters long before it stopped.
Immediately afterwards, the artificial blood vessel was pulled to both sides to make it thicker. It was pulled to the limit of nearly 2 centimeters in thickness before letting go.
In this way, despite repeated pulling, the artificial blood vessel was not deformed or damaged at all.
Finally, Xue Shen directly pinched the blood vessel with his gloved hands and handed it to Wei Kang.
Wei Kang took the artificial blood vessel, put it in his palm, and slowly felt it.
Feel this unique feel through plastic gloves.
The blood vessel is hollow overall, but the wall is not thick, making it appear that there is a larger space inside.
With a light touch, it feels like touching a girl's skin, smooth, soft and elastic.
When kneaded, it looks like cooked beef tendon, very tough.
All in all, it just feels very special.
He rubbed it in his palms and easily formed it into a ball the size of a soybean. But as soon as he let go, the artificial blood vessel quickly returned to its original shape.
"It feels good in the hand and holds well." Wei Kang nodded and put it back in the glass dish.
"When can animal experiments begin?"
Xue Shen groaned: "It will be next week at the earliest. The plan is to have two rounds of animal experiments. The first round will be used on mice, and the second round will be on pigs."
"The mouse experiment is relatively simple. You only need to cut off a small section of blood vessel, replace it with an artificial blood vessel and sew it on, just on the limbs."
"If pigs are used as experimental subjects, they will be divided into two experimental groups. One group will use our new artificial blood vessels, and the other group will use ordinary imported polyester artificial blood vessels for aortic replacement surgery."
"By observing various indicators of two different artificial blood vessels during the operation period and three months after the operation, pathological, imaging, and statistical analysis were conducted to evaluate the actual performance of the artificial blood vessels."
"We have to go to a third-party medical research institution for the pig experiment, because the laboratory does not have doctors and related equipment, so it must be carried out by professionals."
"If the animal experiments go well, we can apply for human clinical trials."
"Very good." Wei Kang gave a thumbs up and said in approval: "I'm looking forward to your experimental report."
Seeing the boss leave with satisfaction, Xue Shen suddenly burst into joy.
This time's efforts paid off, and he finally showed his face in front of the boss. He must have been deeply impressed by the protein synthesis machine.
Next, the success or failure depends on the performance of the artificial blood vessels in animals.
(End of chapter)
