Still modifying!!!
When the news from Berlin arrived, Yang Ping was in the laboratory at the Institute, looking at a cell-stained slide.
It was Manstein, a voice ssage, sounding very excited.
"Professor, I’ve done it!"
The voice was not loud, even sowhat hoarse, like soone who had stayed up several nights.
"It’s original cell repair, not scars, real, functional nerve tissue with normal electrical signal conduction. I used your three-dinsional guiding gene theory, and now original cell repair has improved to 14%, my God, 14%, this is a great advancent, aning my approach is entirely correct."
"Last ti I told you the good news, I had only discovered scattered spinal original cells at the injury site, even if scattered, I confird it’s the success of your theory. I didn’t give up, continued improving the thod, now it’s 14%, I firmly believe one day I can achieve 100%."
"If I achieve 100%, spinal injury repair will beco easy."
"If it reaches 50%, I will attempt head-transplant experints on monkeys."
The voice ssage ended.
Yang Ping placed the phone on the lab bench. He hadn’t finished looking at the cell-stained slide, so he continued. Under the microscope were cell nuclei marked by dye, blue dots densely covering the field of view, like a silent night sky.
Yang Ping’s three-dinsional guiding gene theory centers on a very simple idea: the human body is constructed of cells. Why are the cells not laid flat but able to build the body in three-dinsional space? Hidden within genetic information is a special ability of three-dinsional spatial positioning. This ability allows cells to grow in the direction they need, ultimately forming the human body, instead of a cube or sphere.
Previously, there was also a theory that said cell migration behavior in three-dinsional space is determined by the spatial gradient expressed by genes. This idea isn’t new in developntal biology. Scientists have long proposed similar "morphogen gradient" hypotheses. But Yang Ping’s contribution is that he turned this hypothesis into a true theory, not a crude guess, but a scientific system theory.
Manstein’s application of Yang Ping’s theory in spinal injury also went through many twists and turns, having lost his way at tis. Back then, Manstein was trying to break through from precise crawling of nerve axons. Manstein’s original words: A gene expression increases X hours after injury, leading to B protein forming a gradient in Y spatial range. This gradient guides axon growth of C type cells toward direction D. If you use drugs to inhibit gene A at X hours, the axon’s growth direction will change to a new direction E."
Scientific theory can not only explain but also predict, and prediction is the most hardcore part of science. It’s never about explaining what has already happened but predicting what hasn’t. If a theory can only explain the past, it is nothing. If a theory can predict the future, it’s a candidate for truth.
Manstein used Yang Ping’s theory to develop a spinal theory that predicted a specific ti window: 48 to 72 hours after spinal injury is the best ti for intervention. Within this window, if you can precisely control the expression level of a certain gene, you can change the microenvironnt around the damaged region, creating a gap in the "wall" that inhibits regeneration, allowing original cell repair for nerves.
Manstein and Yang Ping’s communication was very frequent and in-depth. Not daily, but anyti. When Manstein thought of a question, regardless of the ti—whether it’s 3 AM in Berlin or noon in Nandu—he would send Yang Ping a ssage. Sotis it’s a voice ssage, sotis a casually taken experintal record photo, sotis just a few keywords with a question mark. Yang Ping might not reply imdiately, but he would always reply on the sa day. His replies never beat around the bush, never pile up jargon, never put on airs. For a given question, he could provide the core answer in three sentences. If he didn’t know the answer, he would say "I don’t know," and then say "but we can think together."
Later, Manstein told August: "Professor Yang is a genius, but he still remains honest to himself, honest about the problem, honest about things he doesn’t know. Such honesty is exceedingly precious in academia."
The breakthrough in original cell repair didn’t happen overnight.
Manstein is already 57 years old. He once won the Nobel Prize, which was the peak of his academic career. But after the peak ca a long downhill, not downhill in reputation, but in research direction. He turned to the spinal injury repair field, this "hard nut to crack", bringing the aura of the Nobel Prize and the best resources from Charité dical College, but he was stuck in this problem for a full fifteen years.
Fifteen years, for spinal injury patients, is over five thousand days and nights in wheelchairs. For Manstein, it was countless experintal failures, countless hypotheses overturned, countless tis facing the silence of the microscope alone in the laboratory at midnight. He tried chemical genetics, optogenetics, cell transplantation, biomaterial scaffolds; all advanced technologies were used, but all only achieved "scar repair." Axons grew but direction was chaotic; synapses ford but electrical signal conduction was abnormal; the animals’ motor function was improved at best but far from "cured."
Once, after a failure, Manstein called Yang Ping. Yang Ping barely said anything on the other end, just occasionally saying "Hmm" to indicate he was listening. After Manstein finished speaking, Yang Ping paused for a mont and then said a sentence that Manstein rembered for a long ti:
User Comments
0 comments from readers