"Oh? You want to cross coconuts with cows? Then you first need to know what are the differences and similarities between coconuts and cows?
To understand this, you need to first understand the differences and similarities between animals and plants. "
Lanno, who went by the pseudonym Mendel, began to explain his theory to Frank Lee in the laboratory.
Frank Li also listened with great interest. Cells have been discovered in this world, but the genetic material in the nucleus has not been verified. However, if someone can find the manuscript of Emperor Russell, they can find that it records that there is something in the nucleus. DNA, but the Emperor actually knew little about this. The specific form of genetic material existing in the nucleus of the cell, and under what circumstances the chromosomes were formed, the Emperor was not particularly clear about.
Lanno explained to Frank Lee in relatively detail: "So essentially the genetic material of animals and plants is the same, but the order is different, which leads to different expressions during the transcription process, thus synthesizing different Proteins, and even other substances, lead to the differences in the various organisms we see now.
Although we cannot see this with a microscope, we can use some chemicals as a reference to mark the part of the genes we need to monitor for observation. It can be verified through experiments. We generally call it the isotope labeling method. As for the specific principles, it also involves some knowledge other than biology. If you are curious, I can tell you in a moment. "
Although Frank Lee looked like a psychopath, he listened to everything he just explained, and then nodded seriously: "So, there is no essential difference between animals and plants. The Harvest Church objects to me crossing wheat and beef cattle. It’s all because of their shortsightedness.”
Lan Nuo: "..."
"Even now, I do not recommend that you directly carry out crossbreeding to this extent. Before this, your crossbreeding experiments were able to achieve certain results, mostly relying on your talent, or the assistance of extraordinary power.
This kind of research and development is more like a lottery. You can give plants or animals various strange traits, some of which are good and some bad. You can just filter out the good ones, but the whole process is extremely uncontrollable, and you don't get the principle in the end.
And if you want to directly obtain a trait, or eliminate a trait, but don't want to take such chances, what should you do?
In this state of complete luck, how can you determine whether your plants have some recessive genes that hide dangerous traits? "
After thinking about it, Frank Lee found that what Lan Nuo said did make sense. He nodded and said, "So how can we hybridize coconuts and cows?"
Lan Nuo: "..."
Why is this kid so stubborn?
"No... what I mean is that we can actually start from a slightly simpler place. Start with hybridization between different plants. Once you are familiar with the traits controlled by different genes, you can complete some plants with relatively simple genes. After sequencing, it will not be too late to consider more complex animals."
Frank Lee finally nodded this time: "Okay, so what two plants are we going to cross? I want to try crossing apple trees with wheat, and then make bread grow on the apple trees."
Lan Nuo: "..."
He now understands a little bit why the Harvest Church wants to burn this guy. Not to mention the huge difference between herbaceous plants and woody plants, this long loaf of bread is outrageous. For something as artificially processed as bread, he wants to Just growing it out would be like a joke.
At most, it will grow into a loose and porous structure and contain a lot of starch, but at most it will taste like bread. It is almost impossible to actually grow into bread. Even if it can be done, it will not be worth the loss.
"Ahem, these two plants are a bit different. I originally thought that I wanted to cross-breed wheat and corn to a certain extent, which was outrageous enough. It seems that I still underestimated you!"
If we talk about the history of human domestication of plants, what kind of plants are there? If the change is the most outrageous, it must be corn.
The earliest corns had multiple cobs on one plant. You can't even find anything resembling a corn cob on it.
The corn cob has only one row of hard fruits, which looks about the size of a human finger. On both sides of the ear, its seeds are arranged like uneven teeth. The only and present The closest thing to corn is probably its long stalk.
There is a saying that the main purpose of ancient humans planting this thing was actually to eat its straw, just like sugar cane. Even the straw of corn now has a certain sweetness if chewed.
Later, it was discovered that a small amount of fruits could be eaten by the way, so they continued to cultivate them. It took thousands of years to make the ancient corn completely irrelevant to the current corn, and it turned into a corn slightly longer than an egg. Bangzi, to this extent, apart from having fewer knots than it does now, other aspects look about the same.
Subsequent generations of people who planted this thing improved it generation after generation, and finally the corn fruits became as big and plump as they are now, and it has also become one of the crops with the highest yield today. This can almost be regarded as the most improved thing by mankind. It is one of the most complete plants, and this also means that this plant has extremely high potential.
Lan Nuo's idea of improvement did not sound so radical, which made Frank Lee a little disappointed, but soon he heard an idea that interested him very much.
"The time for this project was limited. I didn't have time to let the corn and wheat hybrids go through a complete growth cycle, so our goal was not to develop a hybrid plant seed, but a seed that can be sprayed through things like spraying. It is sprayed like pesticides and directly mutates the wheat."
Frank Lee's eyes lit up, this was a more challenging task, and he was very interested in it. However, he suddenly discovered that if the task became this kind of potion making, the effect of his talent would be greatly reduced.
Biologists can extract part of the gene of one organism and add it to the gene of another organism. Frank Lee easily created a variety of mutant organisms. It is precisely because of this extremely convenient ability.
It's just that he couldn't see the genes before, so he could only rely on blind guessing and try his luck to see if he could come up with suitable plants, but it was different now.
"First we need to determine where the genes we need are. This needs to be done through simple gene sequencing. I will teach you how to sequence using electrophoresis. Under normal circumstances, even if we master the correct method, we want to complete a plant Sequencing also takes nearly a year, but now that you are a biologist, you can intercept sections of genes and determine their functions in a short time through hybridization. We do not need to sequence all genes, just We need to find the section we need and measure the genes in a small area before and after it.
To make the kind of medicine I'm talking about, in addition to finding the corresponding gene sequencing, we also need a virus or bacteria that is not harmful to plants, and we also need the reverse transcription ability of some viruses.
Simply put, it is the ability to insert genes into the genetic material of the host. Don't think that this is the exclusive ability of biologists. Many bacteria and viruses that have evolved in nature have similar abilities. This is also the most critical. The step of genetically modifying an entire plant.
In the past, when we modified plants, we could only modify their seeds, so that the new generation of plants can obtain the traits we want. However, there is basically nothing we can do about the plants that have already grown, and we can only rely on grafting or hybridization. This kind of method affects the plant itself or its offspring.
But if we can rely on viral reverse transcription to directly genetically modify most of the cells in the plant, we can achieve the transformation of the entire plant.
This step is the basis for genetic modification of the human body or other animals. The ability of human cells to divide is even worse than that of plants. If a person is an adult, even if all his stem cells are transformed, waiting for his metabolism, he will It is almost impossible to completely transform all the somatic cells in his body. We must use the power of viruses to make it possible for them to infect every somatic cell and then implant the genes we need into it.
Animal implantation is obviously much more difficult than plants, so I want you to conduct experiments with plants first. "
I have to say that although Frank Lee's ideas are somewhat perverted, he is indeed a genius. He is a biologist whose ideas transcend his time. The principles stated by Lan Nuo would probably be completely confused by other people in this era. But this guy kept up with the idea, nodded repeatedly, and said: "I seem to have discovered the virus you mentioned before. Before, I was wondering how my ability was inherited by the virus. It turns out that this ability is called reverse transcription. The mushrooms on my body contain the type of virus that is parasitic on me. Let’s genetically sequence and modify it.”
Lan Nuo nodded and carefully explained the gene sequencing method. It uses a relatively mature technology in the 21st century, that is, the gene is first broken into fragments, and then the fragments are sequenced, and then spliced together. Together, this seems to be an extremely nonsensical sequencing method, but the internal ordering of genes is actually very regular, just like a language. After mastering the simple grammar, you can piece together the fragmented fragments like a puzzle. In fact, it is not as difficult as imagined.
This is also an important reason why the Human Genome Project can be initially completed. Before this seemingly lazy method was used, sequencing was too difficult and the efficiency was too low, so that the entire Human Genome Project had almost no hope of success.
Although Lan Nuo's workload is much smaller than sequencing human genes, time is tight. They had better get preliminary results within two weeks. If it were not for the cooperation of a biologist, Lan Nuo himself would not be confident that he could complete this matter. Son.
But after he had a biologist around him, he discovered how convenient biologists' abilities were. They could manipulate genes just like building blocks, and the effects of many gene combinations were actually completely memorized by the Lannos. The gene of the virus itself is relatively short. After Lanno taught his teammates how to distinguish the bases, he asked him to manually spell out a piece of the gene and then stuffed it into the genetic material of the virus.
"What is the base sequence you just gave me? It feels like you made it up, but it seems to work normally. Have you actually mastered the laws of genes? You no longer need to borrow from nature like me. The gene of the species!" Frank Li's sensitivity exceeded Lan Nuo's expectations, but he had already thought of an explanation for this.
"I encountered a virus before and sequenced it independently, but at that time I didn't have a way to accurately extract the genetic material, so I wrote down the fragments that were useful to me. Although it was very long, it was If it were simply written on paper, a book would be more than enough.”
Frank Lee nodded. If it were him, he would probably write down the genes. After all, not all biological samples are so easy to preserve, and not all biological samples can be carried with you. But this guy has a quick mind. Quickly, a question came to mind.
"Ah? It suddenly occurred to me that the information recorded in a thing as big as a virus could fill an entire book. So what do you think if we put the content of the book in a virus, it would only be as big as a fingernail? A capsule can fit an entire library.”
Lan Nuo: "!"
What a big trough!
Should he be said to be one of the most incredible genius scientists among the Lords of Mysteries? When it comes to this idea, there is actually no problem at all. Even in the scientific research community of the 21st century, some people have invested their energy in researching related ideas, which is the so-called DNA storage technology.
But let alone the real world, scientists in the 21st century, even in a parallel world called "Donkey and Axe", the protagonist who has obtained the relevant technology has not been realized for almost 3 million words.
Lan Nuogang wanted to say that this technology is too difficult. In today's world, even normal information storage technology, that is, tapes, optical disks and the like, cannot be handled, let alone DNA storage. How to store and how to read are all The big problem is that DNA itself is relatively stable in the human body environment, so there is no need to worry about storage issues.
But as soon as he thought of this, he stopped, and then his pupils trembled again and again. Suddenly, he realized that biologists are different from other people. In other words, the order of technological development in this world is different from that of the normal earth. The order of development is different.
[To be continued]
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