Read Online The Chimera Sequence by Elliott Garber - Free Book Online
Authors: Elliott Garber
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first, knowing what it might mean for his own professional advancement? Or direct more attention and resources to the actual gorilla deaths and the violence his team had narrowly escaped on the ground?
He pulled thin white Tyvek coveralls over his clothes and topped the outfit off with a mask and gloves. Now that he’d gotten the preliminary lab results, they really couldn’t mess around with any more human exposures, cute as this little orphan was.
“You look exhausted,” Marna said. The genuine concern in her voice filled Cole with a quiet warmth. “Are you really going to keep working in that lab all night?”
“Probably. I’ve gone through one whole set of real-time cycles but I want to repeat everything before I sound any false alarms.”
“So does that mean you found something?” Marna carefully handed him the still sleeping gorilla and switched her headlamp back on.
“Yeah, it looks like a definite match for monkeypox. I’ve gotten clear positive reactions for the two most commonly used genes on my PCR assays.”
“Slow down, you lost me there.”
“Sorry, polymerase chain reaction. It’s kind of the bread and butter of molecular diagnostics right now—basically lets me look through those tissue samples from the dead gorillas for a specific sequence of a virus or bacteria’s DNA—and allows for much quicker answers than we could otherwise get in a place like this.”
“So how do you know you can really trust the answers this fancy machine is spitting out?”
“Good question, and sometimes we don’t,” he said. “But in this case I’m pretty confident. The genetic sequences of both the viral proteins I targeted are supposed to be one hundred percent specific to monkeypox, which helps rule out the possibility of any of the virus’s nasty cousins.”
“Like smallpox, you mean? I can’t help but think about those awful pictures in my parents’ old National Geographic magazines. The lumps and bumps completely covering those poor little kids’ bodies look a lot like these ones.”
“Yes, that would be a surprise. But fortunately not one our generation has to worry about. Even though it could infect other animals in lab experiments, smallpox only lived naturally in the human population. That’s what made its eradication possible to begin with.”
Marna slowly moved her headlamp’s beam across the little gorilla’s skeletal arms. “I could only hear bits and pieces of your conversation with Dr. Musamba on our trip back this morning. You said monkeypox is actually a rodent virus?”
“Yep. It was first discovered in lab monkeys back in the ‘50s, so that’s where it got the name.”
Cole parted the baby gorilla’s thick hair and gently ran a finger over the diffuse spotted rash. It was already worse than when they found him earlier in the day. The gorilla was awake now and moved around in his hands with surprising strength.
“Since then,” he continued, “people like me tromping around in central Africa found out that in reality the virus spends most of its time hanging out in a few species of squirrels. Every few years it makes these crazy jumps into humans and other primates, but we haven’t really figured out why that happens or how we can predict and prevent it.”
Although Cole’s hands were still moving across his patient’s little body, his eyes had unconsciously moved several inches higher to rest momentarily on the appealing curves of Marna’s scrub top.
She lifted her head with a smile. “Ah, I get it. Predict like PREDICT, the program you’re funded by, right?”
Didn’t look like she had noticed his straying eyes, Cole saw with embarrassed relief. Why did he always find himself in these awkward situations? Late nights with attractive colleagues were recipes for disaster. Fun disaster, sure, but not what he was really looking for right now.
“Exactly. My doctoral research here is part of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program, and PREDICT is a
He pulled thin white Tyvek coveralls over his clothes and topped the outfit off with a mask and gloves. Now that he’d gotten the preliminary lab results, they really couldn’t mess around with any more human exposures, cute as this little orphan was.
“You look exhausted,” Marna said. The genuine concern in her voice filled Cole with a quiet warmth. “Are you really going to keep working in that lab all night?”
“Probably. I’ve gone through one whole set of real-time cycles but I want to repeat everything before I sound any false alarms.”
“So does that mean you found something?” Marna carefully handed him the still sleeping gorilla and switched her headlamp back on.
“Yeah, it looks like a definite match for monkeypox. I’ve gotten clear positive reactions for the two most commonly used genes on my PCR assays.”
“Slow down, you lost me there.”
“Sorry, polymerase chain reaction. It’s kind of the bread and butter of molecular diagnostics right now—basically lets me look through those tissue samples from the dead gorillas for a specific sequence of a virus or bacteria’s DNA—and allows for much quicker answers than we could otherwise get in a place like this.”
“So how do you know you can really trust the answers this fancy machine is spitting out?”
“Good question, and sometimes we don’t,” he said. “But in this case I’m pretty confident. The genetic sequences of both the viral proteins I targeted are supposed to be one hundred percent specific to monkeypox, which helps rule out the possibility of any of the virus’s nasty cousins.”
“Like smallpox, you mean? I can’t help but think about those awful pictures in my parents’ old National Geographic magazines. The lumps and bumps completely covering those poor little kids’ bodies look a lot like these ones.”
“Yes, that would be a surprise. But fortunately not one our generation has to worry about. Even though it could infect other animals in lab experiments, smallpox only lived naturally in the human population. That’s what made its eradication possible to begin with.”
Marna slowly moved her headlamp’s beam across the little gorilla’s skeletal arms. “I could only hear bits and pieces of your conversation with Dr. Musamba on our trip back this morning. You said monkeypox is actually a rodent virus?”
“Yep. It was first discovered in lab monkeys back in the ‘50s, so that’s where it got the name.”
Cole parted the baby gorilla’s thick hair and gently ran a finger over the diffuse spotted rash. It was already worse than when they found him earlier in the day. The gorilla was awake now and moved around in his hands with surprising strength.
“Since then,” he continued, “people like me tromping around in central Africa found out that in reality the virus spends most of its time hanging out in a few species of squirrels. Every few years it makes these crazy jumps into humans and other primates, but we haven’t really figured out why that happens or how we can predict and prevent it.”
Although Cole’s hands were still moving across his patient’s little body, his eyes had unconsciously moved several inches higher to rest momentarily on the appealing curves of Marna’s scrub top.
She lifted her head with a smile. “Ah, I get it. Predict like PREDICT, the program you’re funded by, right?”
Didn’t look like she had noticed his straying eyes, Cole saw with embarrassed relief. Why did he always find himself in these awkward situations? Late nights with attractive colleagues were recipes for disaster. Fun disaster, sure, but not what he was really looking for right now.
“Exactly. My doctoral research here is part of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program, and PREDICT is a
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