Ten thousand I am across the heavens

"Oh? You want to crossbreed coconuts and cows? Then you first need to know what are the differences and commonalities between coconuts and cows?
To understand this, you need to understand the differences and commonalities between animals and plants. "

Lan Nuo, whose pseudonym was Mendel, began to explain his theory to Frank Lee in the laboratory.

Frank Li also listened with gusto. Cells have been discovered in this world, but the genetic material in the nucleus has not yet been verified. However, if someone can find the manuscript of Emperor Roselle, they can find that it records that the nucleus contains DNA, but the Great Emperor actually didn't know much about it, what kind of form the specific genetic material exists in the nucleus, and under what circumstances will form chromosomes, the Great Emperor is actually not particularly clear.

Lan Nuo gave a relatively detailed explanation to Frank Lee: "So in essence, the genetic material of animals and plants is the same, but the order of arrangement is different, which leads to their different expressions in the process of transcription, thus synthesizing different genetic materials. The proteins, and even other substances, lead to the differences in the various organisms we see now.

Although we cannot borrow a microscope to see this, we can use some chemical substances as a reference to mark the part of the gene we need to monitor for observation.It can be verified through experiments. We generally call it the isotope labeling method. As for the specific principle, it also involves some knowledge other than biology. If you are curious, I can tell you later. "

Although Frank Li looked like a psychopath, he listened to all the explanations just now, and then nodded seriously: "So, there is no essential difference between animals and plants, and the Harvest Church opposes my hybridization of wheat and beef cattle It's all because of their short-sightedness."

Lan Nuo: "..."

"Even now, I don't recommend that you directly carry out this level of hybridization. Before that, your hybridization experiments could achieve certain results, most of which depended on your talent, or the assistance of extraordinary power.

Such research and development is more like a lottery. You can give plants or animals all kinds of strange traits, some of which are good and some are bad.You can just filter out the good ones, but the whole process is extremely uncontrollable, and you haven't figured out the principle in the end.

And if you want to directly obtain a trait, or eliminate a trait, what should you do if you don't want to be so lucky?

In this state of complete luck, how can you be sure whether your plants have some recessive genes that hide dangerous traits. "

After thinking about it, Frank Lee found that what Lan Nuo said was indeed reasonable, nodded and said, "So how can we crossbreed 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, starting from the hybridization between different plants, and when you are familiar with the traits controlled by different genes, you can complete some plants with relatively simple genes. After the sequencing of our species, it is not too late to consider more complex animals."

Frank Lee finally nodded this time: "Okay, so which two plants do we want to crossbreed? I want to try crossbreeding apple trees with wheat, and then make bread grow on apple trees."

Lan Nuo: "..."

He now understands why the Harvest Church wants to burn this guy, not to mention the huge difference between herbaceous plants and woody plants, this long bread is outrageous. It's just like a joke to grow directly.

At most, it grows into a loose and porous structure, and contains a lot of starch, but this thing tastes like bread at most. It is almost impossible to grow into bread, and even if it is done, it is not worth the loss.

"Ahem, the difference between these two plants is a bit too much. I originally thought that if I wanted to hybridize wheat and corn to a certain extent, it would be 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 is not corn.

The earliest corn is not to mention multiple corncobs on one plant.You won't even find anything resembling corn on the cob in it.

Compared with the corn cob, there is only a row of hard fruit, which looks only the size of a human finger. On both sides of the ear, its seeds are arranged like jagged teeth. The only and current The corn is somewhat close to its long stalk.

There is a saying that the main purpose of ancient humans planting this thing is to eat its stalks, just like sugar cane, including the current corn stalks, which have a certain sweet taste if chewed.

Later, it was discovered that a small amount of fruit can be eaten by the way, so it has been cultivated. It took thousands of years to make the ancient corn completely incompatible with the current corn, and become a slightly longer than the egg. Bangzi, at this level, except that there are fewer knots than now, other aspects seem to be not much different.

Subsequent people who planted this thing improved generation after generation, which finally turned the fruit of corn into the big and plump appearance it is now, and it has also become one of the crops with the highest yield today. This can almost be regarded as the most improved by humans. One of the most thorough plants, and this also means that this plant has extremely high potential.

Lan Nuo's idea of ​​improvement didn't sound that radical, which disappointed Frank Lee, but soon he heard an idea that interested him very much.

"The time limit for this project is limited. I don't have time to complete a full growth cycle of a corn-wheat hybrid, so our goal is not to develop a hybrid plant seed, but a plant that can be sprayed like It is sprayed like a pesticide, which directly mutates the wheat."

Frank Li's eyes lit up, this is a more challenging task, he is very interested in this.However, he suddenly found that if the task became this kind of potion making, the effect of his talent would be greatly reduced.

Biologists can extract a part of the gene of one creature and add it to the gene of another creature. Frank Lee easily created all kinds of mutant creatures, precisely because of this extremely convenient ability.

It's just that he couldn't see the genes before, so he could only rely on blindness and try his luck to see if he could produce suitable plants, but now it's different.

"First of all, 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 use electrophoresis for sequencing. Under normal circumstances, even if we have mastered the correct method and want to complete a plant It also takes nearly a year to sequence the genes, but you are now a biologist, you can cut out segments of genes, and judge their functions in a short time through hybridization. We don’t need to sequence all the genes, just We need to find the segment we need, and measure the gene of a small area before and after it.

To make the kind of medicine I mentioned, in addition to finding the corresponding gene sequencing, we also need a virus or bacteria that is not harmful to plants, and some viruses have the reverse transcription ability.

Simply put, it is the ability to insert a gene 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 a plant as a whole.

In the past, when we modified plants, we could only modify his seeds, so that the new generation of plants could obtain the traits we wanted, but there was basically nothing we could do about the plants that had already grown, we could only rely on grafting or hybridization. The effect of similar methods on the plant itself or its offspring.

But if we can rely on the reverse transcription of viruses to directly genetically modify most of the cells in plants, we can achieve the transformation of plants as a whole.

And this step is the basis for genetically modifying the human body or other animals. The division ability of human cells is even worse than that of plants. If a person is an adult, even if he transforms all his stem cells and waits for his metabolism, he will It is almost impossible to transform all the somatic cells in his body. We have to rely on the power of viruses to make them infect every somatic cell and then implant the genes we need.

The difficulty of animal implantation is obviously much greater than that of plants, so I want you to experiment with plants first. "

I have to say that although Frank Lee's thinking is a bit perverted, his talent is indeed lacking. He belongs to a biologist whose ideas transcend the times. The principles that Lan Nuo said, if it is heard by other people in this era, I am afraid that they are already at a loss. But this guy caught up with the train of thought, nodded again and again, and said: "I seem to have discovered it before. You said that kind of virus. Before, I wondered how my ability was inherited by the virus. It turns out that this ability is called reverse transcription. I have mushrooms with this type of virus in them. Let's sequence and modify it."

Lan Nuo nodded, and carefully explained the method of gene sequencing. It uses a relatively mature technology in the 21st century, that is, the gene is first broken into fragments, and then these fragments are sequenced, and then spliced ​​together after completion. This seems to be an extremely nonsensical sequencing method, but the internal sequencing of genes is actually very regular, just like a language. After mastering the simple grammar, you can piece together fragmentary fragments like a jigsaw puzzle. Not as difficult as imagined.

This is also an important reason why the Human Genome Project can be initially completed. Before using this seemingly lazy method, sequencing is too difficult and the efficiency is too low, so that the entire Human Genome Project has almost no hope of success.

Although Lan Nuo's workload is much smaller than sequencing human genes, time is tight. They'd better get the preliminary results within two weeks. If it wasn't for the cooperation of a biologist, Lan Nuo himself wouldn't have the confidence to get it done. Son.

And it wasn't until he had an additional biologist by his side that he discovered how convenient the biologist's ability is. He can manipulate genes like building blocks, and the effects of many gene combinations are actually memorized by Lan Nuo and others. The virus gene itself is relatively short. After Lan Nuo taught his teammates how to distinguish the bases, he asked him to spell out a gene by hand, 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 be working normally. Have you actually mastered the laws of genes? You no longer need to borrow natural The gene of the species!" Frank Lee's sensitivity exceeded Lan Nuo's expectations, but he had already thought of an explanation for it.

"I have encountered a virus before and sequenced it independently, but at that time I had no way to extract the genetic material accurately, so I wrote down the fragments that were useful to me, although it was very long, but If it is simply written on paper, a book is more than enough."

Frank Lee nodded. If it were him, he would probably write down his genes. After all, not all biological samples are so easy to preserve, and not all biological samples can be carried with him, but this guy's brain is turning Quickly, a question came to mind very quickly.

"Huh? It suddenly occurred to me that a thing as big as a virus can fill an entire book with the information recorded in it. Then you said that if we put the contents of the book in the virus, would it only be the size of a fingernail?" A capsule can hold an entire library."

Lan Nuo: "!"

I have a big hole!
Should it be said that he is one of the most heaven-defying genius scientists among the Lords of Mysteries?Speaking of this idea, there is actually no problem at all. Even in the scientific research circle of the 21st century, some people have devoted their energy to research, 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 "The Donkey and the Axe", the protagonist who has obtained the relevant technology is almost 300 million words and has not realized it.

Lan Nuo just wanted to say that this technology is too difficult. In today's world, even the normal information storage technology, that is, tapes, CDs, etc., can't handle it, let alone DNA storage. How to store and how to read The big problem is that DNA itself is relatively stable in the human environment, so there is not much need to worry about storage.

But as soon as he thought of this, he stopped, and then his pupils shook again and again. Suddenly, he realized that biologists are different from other people, that is to say, 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]

Ask for collection, ask for recommendation ticket~
Ask for a ticket~