Her research had been devoted to finding a cure for the deadly African virus for years. Like all other viruses, HIV could not be grown on inert media, but rather required a living substrate. Most often chick cells derived from embryonic eggs were used to cultivate viruses, although human HeLa cells and even mouse cells could also be used. The cells were induced to grow on one inside wall of special rectangular shaped bottles which lay perfectly flat on trays.
A clear serum closely mimicking blood (without the red blood cells) was placed in the bottles so that the chick or human or mouse cells, growing like a translucent lawn along the bottom side of the bottle, were nourished with it. Then the cells were carefully infected with the virus which would reproduce madly, killing most of the cells. Once enough virus particles were obtained, the researchers could run different experiments on how to attack the virus.
For the initial Laptev virus experiments, her team had attempted to use both cells grown in bottles as well as live mice. However, it had soon become evident that the mice were a better option as they were mammalian cells and the virus thrived in them. Thus they had concentrated all of their efforts on using mice for the experiments.
She remained with her eyes fixed on the monitor, lost in thought. She had triple checked the techniques that her investigators had used, searching for mistakes or deviations from standard procedure that could explain the sudden change in events. None had surfaced. As the minutes elapsed, she became convinced that the contamination must not have occurred in the lab.
So, she thought, if it did not happen in BSL-4, then the mice must have been contaminated from the beginning. But how could that have happened? When did it occur? Why would only some of the mice be contaminated? And what exactly was it that had caused the contamination? What were those damn purple dots? Why were they only in the brain cells of some of the mice?
She looked at the clock hanging sterilely on the wall, like an impartial observer, not caring one whit about the rapidity of the passing minutes and hours which it marked. It was nearly eight. John had said that he needed to work late too, but now she called him and asked if he wouldn’t mind picking her up. Her foot hurt too much to drive back to their apartment by herself.
CHAPTER 16
“You are not going to believe the day I’ve had, John” said Sarah as soon as she settled herself into her seat in the car. Since he had been tied up in meetings all afternoon and she had been unable to reach him by phone earlier, she had decided to just wait and tell him the whole saga in person.
“Apparently, the oil company has been putting pressure on Rhonda because they want to open up drilling in the Arctic again, so she’s been coming down to my office for lots of meetings, and we have been updating her on our results pretty much on a daily basis.”
John nodded, looking at her briefly and then returning his attention to the road.
“Well, yesterday morning, just after my meeting with Rhonda, Emile came to my office and told me that some of the results just didn’t make any sense. I looked at his data, and sure enough. We had three groups of mice, receiving low, medium and high dosages of the virus, and they did not have the reactions that we expected.”
“What kind of reactions did they have?” asked John.
“They died.”
John whistled softly. “Ouch. All of them?”
Sarah looked despondently out the window at the darkening summer sky. “No, not all of them, but it still totally sucks. I mean, they didn’t even do the dying part right. We had expectations about how many would be taken ill based on the quantity of virus they received, but what we got was a weird mix of mice dying at low dosages and mice living at high dosages. I just don’t get it. I mean, we’ve been working with mice and with viruses for a long time. We’re not rookies who didn’t design an experiment properly. Something is definitely amiss and I haven’t figured it out.”
John listened quietly as he drove, but Sarah said no more. “I don’t know, maybe some of the mice were different strains? Or some were hardier to begin with…”
“Good guesses, but no, they checked all that. There were a few differences between the mice, but those differences showed up pretty evenly in both groups, the ones that lived and the ones that didn’t.”
“Hmm,” said John. “Maybe the techs got the mice mixed up in the vivarium before they gave them to your lab?”
Sarah had also thought about that scenario. “It does seem like the most likely explanation, you’re right, but it’s baffling given the genetic similarity of all the mice. The ones that are altered with tumors or other genetic defects are usually also quite obviously different at the DNA level, and close parentage among the genetically modified ones is not common. Oh, and the other thing we found is that some of the mice seem to be… contaminated with something. It’s really strange.”
“Contaminated,” said John solemnly, and a heavy silence flooded the car for a moment. The “c” word, as Sarah sometimes called it, was a nightmare for all researchers.
“Contaminated,” she repeated, seeing the annoying purple dots in her mind’s eye. “I don’t know for sure, but we saw these strange little specs in their brain cells. Not all the mice have them, mind you. But… actually, the more I think about it, the more those little dots look like cysts to me. I said as much to Drew and Tally, but they think it might be something else. Still, I’m only working on a hunch. I don’t know how it could have happened or how these mice could have cysts in their brains without suffering any other collateral damage. It’s pretty strange.”
“And you’re doing tests to find out what those little dots are?” he asked, pulling the car into a parking spot. One of the great things about living in an apartment building close to the museum district was their short commute, especially at this hour of the evening. They got out and Sarah leaned on John, her leg now pulsing more painfully. “We gotta get you to the couch,” he said, gently leading her toward the door of their apartment.
Once she sat down and propped up her leg, Sarah sighed. “Yeah, that’s where we are. Drew and Tally left a few reactions running, just to see what we can come up with. But I’m starting to think that it’s also possible that those purple dots, that infection, contamination or whatever it is, may not even be involved in the way that the mice reacted to the virus.”
“A red herring?”
Sarah nodded. “It’s possible. I don’t think they’ve examined all of the mice to see which ones have dots, so we don’t know which ones are contaminated, or if the contamination is equally distributed among all the mice, you know. It could be that the contamination is found in both the living and the dead tissues. And maybe we just stumbled on those purple dots by chance and they don’t really mean anything.”
“Hmm,” said John, as he put on an apron and began composing their dinner. “Well, so back to your first situation. Why would some of the mice be living while others died? You said they had the same dosage?”
“The same dosage within different groups. So you have a group of mice, say Group A, who all get a low dose of virus delivered directly to their lungs. All should live or, if they die, then most of them should die. We have about 50% dying. Then we have Group B with a higher dose of virus. If 50% of Group A died, then you’d definitely expect a higher number of mice to die when they have more virus pumped into their lungs. But they don’t. It’s like 48% that die and the rest aren’t sick at all.