“Personally, I never eat rare meat,” Jurie said with a contemplative arch of his brows. “Too many loose genes floating around. Dr. Miller, our chief botanist, tells me I should be concerned about my greens, as well.”
Orlin Miller raised his hands in collegial defense. “Equal time for veggies.”
They entered Building Two, the combination aviary and herpetarium. Mounted on benches beside the large sliding warehouse door, glass boxes housed king snakes coiled beneath red heat lamps.
“We have evidence of a slow but constant lateral flow of genes between species,” Jurie said. “Dr. Foresmith is studying transfer of genes between exogenous and endogenous viruses in chickens and ducks, as well as in the Psittaciformes, parrots.”
Foresmith, an imposing, gray-haired fellow in his early fifties, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Dicken knew him for his work on minimum genome bacteria—took up the topic. “Flu and other exogenous viruses can exchange genes and recombine within host or reservoir populations,” he said, his voice a bass rumble. “New strains of flu used to come rumbling out of Asia every year. Now, we know that exogenous and endogenous viruses—herpes, poxviruses, HIV, SHEVA—can recombine in us. What if these viruses make a mistake? Slip a gene into the wrong location in a cell's DNA . . . A cell starts to ignore its duties and grows out of control. Voilà, a malignant tumor. Or, a relatively mild virus acquires one crucial gene and flips from a persistent to an acute infection. One really bigmistake, and pow,” he slapped his fist into his palm, “we suffer one hundred percent mortality.” His smile was at once admiring and nervous. “One of our paleo guys figures we can explain a lot of mass extinctions that way, in theory. If we could resurrect and reassemble the older, extremely degraded ERVs, maybe we would learn what actually happened to the dinosaurs.”
“Not so fast,” Dicken said, raising his hands in surrender. “I don't know anything about dinosaurs or stressed cows.”
“Let's hold off on the wilder theories for now,” Jurie admonished Foresmith, but his eyes gleamed. “Tom, you're next.”
Tom Wrigley was the youngest in the group, in his mid-twenties, tall, dark-haired, and homely, with a red nose and a perpetually pleasant expression. He smiled shyly and handed Dicken a coin, a quarter. “That's roughly what a birth control pill costs. My group is studying the effect of birth control on endogenous retrovirus expression in women between the ages of twenty and fifty.”
Dicken rolled the quarter in his hand. Tom held out his palm, lifting his eyebrows, and Dicken returned the coin.
“Tell them why, Tom,” Jurie prodded.
“Twenty years ago, some researchers found that HIV infected pregnant women at a higher rate. Some human endogenous retroviruses are closely related to HIV, which goes after our immune systems with a vengeance. The fetus within the mother expresses lots of HERV from its placenta, which some think helps subdue the mom's immune system in a beneficial way—just enough so that it won't attack the developing fetus. TLV, as you know, Dr. Dicken.”
“Howard Temin is a god in this place,” Dee Dee Blakemore said. “We've set up a little shrine in C wing. Prayers every Wednesday.”
“Birth control pills produce conditions in women similar to pregnancy,” Wrigley said. “We decided that women on birth control would make an excellent study group. We have twenty volunteers, five of them our own researchers.”
Blakemore raised her hand. “I'm one,” she said. “I'm feeling testy already.” She growled at Wrigley and bared her canines. Wrigley held up his hands in mock fright.
“Eventually, SHEVA females will be getting pregnant,” Wrigley said, “and some may even use birth control pills. We want to know how that will effect production of potential pathogens.”
“Sexual maturity and pregnancy in the new children is likely to be a time of great danger,” Jurie said. “Retroviruses released in the natural course of a second generation SHEVA pregnancy could transfer to humans. The result could be another HIV-like disease. In fact, Dr. Presky here, among others, believes something similar explains how HIV got into the human population.”
Presky weighed in. “A hunter in search of bush meat could have slaughtered a pregnant chimp.” He shrugged; the hypothesis was still speculation, as Dicken knew well. As a postdoc in the late 1980s, Dicken had spent two years in the Congo and Zaire tracking possible sources for HIV.
“And last but not least, our gardens. Dr. Miller?”
Orlin Miller pointed to flats of greenery and flower gardens spread out under skylights and artificial sun bulbs hanging in imposing phalanxes, like great glassy fruit, on the north side of the warehouse. “My group studies transfer of viral genes between plants and insects, funguses and bacteria. As Dr. Jurie hinted earlier, we're also studying human genes that may have originated in plants,” Miller added. “I can just see the Nobel hanging from that one.”
“Not that you'll ever go up on stage to collect,” Jurie warned.
“No, of course not,” Miller said, somewhat deflated.
“Enough. Just a taste,” Jurie said, stopping in front of a basin containing a thick growth of young corn. “Seven other division heads who could not be here tonight extend their congratulations—to me, for landing Dr. Dicken. Not necessarily do they congratulate Dr. Dicken.”
The others smiled.
“Thanks, gentlemen,” Jurie said, and waved bye-bye, as if to a group of school children. The directors said their farewells and filed out of the warehouse. Only Turner remained.
Jurie fixed Dicken with a gaze. “NIH tells me I can find a use for you at Pathogenics,” Jurie said. “NIH funds a substantial portion of my work here, through Emergency Action. Still, I'm curious. Why did you accept this appointment? Not because you love and respect me, Dr. Dicken.” Jurie loosely crossed his arms and his bony fingers engaged in a fit of searching, marching along toward the elbows, drawing the arms into a tighter hug.
“I go where the science is,” Dicken said. “I think you're primed to discover some interesting things. And I think I can help. Besides . . .” He paused. “They gave you a list. You picked me.”
Jurie lifted one hand dismissively. “Everything we do here is political. I'd be a fool not to recognize it,” he said. “But, frankly, I think we're winning. Our work is too important to stop, for whatever reason. And we might as well have the best people working with us, whatever their connections. You're a fine scientist, and that's the bottom line.” Jurie strolled before a plastic-wrapped greenhouse filled with banana trees, obscured by the translucent plastic. “If you think you're ready, I have a theoretical problem for you.”
“Ready as I'll ever be,” Dicken said.
“I'd like for you to start with something a little off the beaten path. Up for it?”
“I'm listening,” Dicken said.
“You can work with Dr. Wrigley's volunteers. Assemble a staff from our resident postdocs under Dee Dee's supervision, no more than two to begin with. They're analyzing ancient promoter regions associated with sexual characteristics, physiological changes in humans possibly induced by retroviral genes.” Jurie swallowed conspicuously. “Viruses have induced changes quite evident in our SHEVA children. Now, I'd like to study more mundane instances in humans. Can you think of the fold of tissue of which I'm suspicious?” Jurie asked.