Helena returned home to catch up on
her email. She was stunned to see an encrypted email message from
Jnarn in Japan, the very scientist she'd soon be working with. As
she read his email and carefully perused the attached data her
excitement grew. Heart pounding she read over the data again. Could
it really be that the equivalent of a genetic full stop, and extra
'stop' codon in an innocuous strand of DNA had kept human lives
artificially short. How the hell had that occurred? Usually
mutations that weren't beneficial to the species remained rare or
soon died out. This had to have affected the whole of the human
race almost simultaneously. A pandemic perhaps? Jnarn was wondering
if there was some way to reverse it.
Helena
wondered if Jnarn had any idea what the deactivated part of the
strand did. It might have other functions, not just the obvious
creation of a protein vital to maintaining the length of telomeres.
Telomeres had long fascinated those interested in aging processes.
They were a tiny part in each and every cell of the human body. A
bit seemed to drop off the end of them every time a cell divided.
It was like a built in use-by-date for any human, limiting them to
at best 120 years and only then in optimal conditions. But if
humans had been meant to live longer what else might be in the
deactivated DNA? What else did it do? That was the question. Or
maybe not. Maybe the real question was what genetic code had the
strategically placed full stop, a stop codon, wiped out? A codon
was the equivalent of a genetic word, always three letters long.
Three letters from an alphabet of only four possible characters.
But there were twenty different proteins those three letters could
code.
She fired up a
computer software program she'd written herself for just for
looking at this kind of stuff and started analyzing the possible
combinations. Tracking back to the non-coding sequence that
preceded the strand she began the long process of analyzing the
bits that might have originally acted as enhancers or repressors,
regulating the the instructions the DNA contained. There had to be
a hint in there somewhere. It was a process that could conceivably
take years but by some fluke. About 3am with her eyes begging to
close, she found it. Eureka! Excitedly she sent an encrypted email
back to Japan before dragging herself to bed, for what little
remained of the night.
In a secret
bunker, North Korea...
Mr S. Sauron,
Sakla to those who dared, fidgeted restlessly. He shouldn't have
been worrying. His vast global financial interests were thriving.
The economic malaise of the last few years seemed to be over, for
the moment. The general masses weren’t consuming as much, weren’t
travelling as much but they were still eating and aging. His vast
investments in agri-chemicals, hospitals and medical products were
giving greater returns than he could have hoped. With a bit of
leaning on he’d soon have more governments giving up the heinous
idea of providing anything free to their citizens he’d make even
more profit. What did citizen’s think, that they had provided the
money in the first place or something. His companies employed them,
it was his money he loaned to them so they could buy his products.
Yet he couldn’t quite stop all the loonies who were opting to get
off-the-grid and drop out of the system altogether. He thought he’d
stopped that little problem back in the sixties. There was progress
to in privatising the world’s water supplies and prison systems.
Hmm! He might have to find a few more things to make illegal so he
could fill those prisons to capacity. Maybe he could make getting
off-the-grid illegal.
His current
host's body was wearing out but he'd replace it for something
better soon. He doubted the man whose aura he inhabited would
survive his departure, the man's identity long ago being subsumed
beneath his own. With what little remained of the body's connection
to its original soul he doubted it would
her email. She was stunned to see an encrypted email message from
Jnarn in Japan, the very scientist she'd soon be working with. As
she read his email and carefully perused the attached data her
excitement grew. Heart pounding she read over the data again. Could
it really be that the equivalent of a genetic full stop, and extra
'stop' codon in an innocuous strand of DNA had kept human lives
artificially short. How the hell had that occurred? Usually
mutations that weren't beneficial to the species remained rare or
soon died out. This had to have affected the whole of the human
race almost simultaneously. A pandemic perhaps? Jnarn was wondering
if there was some way to reverse it.
Helena
wondered if Jnarn had any idea what the deactivated part of the
strand did. It might have other functions, not just the obvious
creation of a protein vital to maintaining the length of telomeres.
Telomeres had long fascinated those interested in aging processes.
They were a tiny part in each and every cell of the human body. A
bit seemed to drop off the end of them every time a cell divided.
It was like a built in use-by-date for any human, limiting them to
at best 120 years and only then in optimal conditions. But if
humans had been meant to live longer what else might be in the
deactivated DNA? What else did it do? That was the question. Or
maybe not. Maybe the real question was what genetic code had the
strategically placed full stop, a stop codon, wiped out? A codon
was the equivalent of a genetic word, always three letters long.
Three letters from an alphabet of only four possible characters.
But there were twenty different proteins those three letters could
code.
She fired up a
computer software program she'd written herself for just for
looking at this kind of stuff and started analyzing the possible
combinations. Tracking back to the non-coding sequence that
preceded the strand she began the long process of analyzing the
bits that might have originally acted as enhancers or repressors,
regulating the the instructions the DNA contained. There had to be
a hint in there somewhere. It was a process that could conceivably
take years but by some fluke. About 3am with her eyes begging to
close, she found it. Eureka! Excitedly she sent an encrypted email
back to Japan before dragging herself to bed, for what little
remained of the night.
In a secret
bunker, North Korea...
Mr S. Sauron,
Sakla to those who dared, fidgeted restlessly. He shouldn't have
been worrying. His vast global financial interests were thriving.
The economic malaise of the last few years seemed to be over, for
the moment. The general masses weren’t consuming as much, weren’t
travelling as much but they were still eating and aging. His vast
investments in agri-chemicals, hospitals and medical products were
giving greater returns than he could have hoped. With a bit of
leaning on he’d soon have more governments giving up the heinous
idea of providing anything free to their citizens he’d make even
more profit. What did citizen’s think, that they had provided the
money in the first place or something. His companies employed them,
it was his money he loaned to them so they could buy his products.
Yet he couldn’t quite stop all the loonies who were opting to get
off-the-grid and drop out of the system altogether. He thought he’d
stopped that little problem back in the sixties. There was progress
to in privatising the world’s water supplies and prison systems.
Hmm! He might have to find a few more things to make illegal so he
could fill those prisons to capacity. Maybe he could make getting
off-the-grid illegal.
His current
host's body was wearing out but he'd replace it for something
better soon. He doubted the man whose aura he inhabited would
survive his departure, the man's identity long ago being subsumed
beneath his own. With what little remained of the body's connection
to its original soul he doubted it would
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