While asleep, Photon and Natalie felt slight vibrations in the front of their bodies, and Natalie then realized that something had been attached to other areas as well. In the haze they tried to open their eyes and see, but the vibrations were gone.
"What's that?" Natalie whispered.
"I don't know. I'll look at it after I wake up." Said Photon, falling asleep again. Natalie had to sleep on.
The snow outside the window became denser and denser. Street lights illuminated snowflakes blown by a strong wind. The stars were also blearily yawning, and had no intention to play hide-and-seek with a few clouds floating in the wind. The falling snow made a thick white blanket over the ground.
A few hours later, the snow gradually stopped and the mother star rose again. The brilliant light caressed the blanket of snow, melting them with a warm kiss. So the weather became cold. The people in the street were wearing light clothes last night, but this morning they all put on heavy overcoats.
The airplane and the racing car opened their eyes. When they saw that they had undergone the transplantation, their excitement lasted.
Sam explained, "I carried out the transplantation in the middle of the night. Since your master, William, has more information to ask me about the codon, I don't think I can delay your transplantation too much. Come here, William. I remember where the rest of the clues are. You guys go there first. Then I'll take you to my lab to make a catalase inhibitor."
Following Sam's brisk pace, they found the book documenting the catalase inhibitor's preparation in a room filled with a variety of notebooks. Sam said, "Yes, that's it! Between base pair 18 and 19, GCU! Let me see the appendix at the back... GCU stands for alanine! Great, now we can get started!"
They followed Sam to a long staircase. Sam took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and easily found a small purple key. "This way," He said, going downstairs and through a sharp bend. They were facing another narrow corridor. For some reason there was a sudden gust of cold wind, mingled with a whisper, a sound that seemed both familiar and strange to William.
As if gripped by something at the throat, Sam suddenly gasped for breath and stumbled over. His eyes were wide, his heart was racing, and his face was in agony. The party watched anxiously as his hands struggled feebly. William pulled out his laser gun and aimed at the other end of the corridor, but he didn't know exactly where.
"Let me go!" Sam said as hard as he could.
"Ha, ha, ha," Said a low, shrill sneer, following the wind from the other end of the corridor. It struck William like a sharpened dagger, so at once he clung to his head.
"You're not going back." Whispered the voice, and then died away laughing. The corridor lit up.
"Who could it be?" Ranran asked William softly as they marched to the door of the laboratory, "I don't think you look very well."
He looked at Ranran with a worried look on his face and just smiled. "Sooner or later," He said, "I will know who he is, and I know his plan will not succeed. We'll be back."
Ranran had to stop asking and follow the others into the lab. They were shocked by what they saw inside. Looking inside, it was lined with storage boxes and neat rows of laboratory tables. A variety of instruments of different specifications were placed in the storage boxes, such as measuring cylinder, test tube, glass plate and microscope; there was also a variety of drugs or reagents, such as sodium hydroxide, glycerin, AGAR, methyl green and pyronine, 2,4-D, and so on. On each laboratory table, test tube holder, jar, plastic head dropper, glass slides and other commonly used instruments were arranged in order in the front. In the middle was a number of symmetrical arrangement of faucets, and at the edge of the tables were a small light switch and a variety of specifications of the socket.
Sam asked them to sit at a table and wait. He went behind a wall and fetched some unusual items. Among them was a valuable pipette gun. The party gaped as he skillfully arranged the items on the table.
Then he opened a box full of liquid and pointed to the left-hand tank. "Here's the special gene I made earlier," He said.
He took out 1 milliliter with a pipette gun, added it to a clean tube and shook it several times. "We're now going to use the microscope to insert that extra codon into the m-RNA that's going to do its job. But first we need to make a three-base-pair gene." Said Sam as he removed a total of 3.5 milliliters of liquid from the tank to the right of the box and transferred it to the test tube. When the oscillation was over, he fixed the tube with a tube holder and placed it on an iron platform.
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"Based on base complementarity, we now need to insert base pairs CGA-GCU into the original gene. These solutions are filled with the CGA-GCU base pairs I have formulated, along with the indispensable DNA cleavase and polymerase. It takes them about three to five minutes to complete the task. You guys wait until I get the hydrogen peroxide." Sam hurried over to a locker, opened the door, and pulled out a small bottle. He went straight to the opposite wall and easily took out enough catalase.
"Almost there," He said, taking the tube to the electron microscope, turning it on, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the graceful double helix structure had increased an infinitesimal length.
He got up and took the tube back to the table, where he prepared the RNA polymerase and the peptidyl transferase for transcription and translation. The others had remained silent all this time, just quietly watching him work intently.
"Now we can start making inhibitors." Sam added RNA polymerase to the tube and oscillated for a few seconds. This was fast, so he immediately added peptidyl transferase and raced off to the electron microscope. The party couldn't take their eyes off t-RNA's impressive rate of 15 base pairs per second.
"These sprightly little guys are so efficient and so ingenious." Ranran showed a smile of admiration.
"Yes, especially cells. To be honest, we haven't been able to assemble a cell yet." Sam shook his head regretfully, picked up the test tube and centrifuged to get the protein.
"Now what we have is an inhibitor. I'll get a white mouse to test it." Within half a minute, Sam was walking toward the others with a shiny mouse in his hand. He took out his pipette gun and transferred the inhibitor solution. He had anesthetized the mouse, so all he had to do was to inject the solution into the mouse with lightning speed.
Sam kept looking at its cells under an electron microscope. For the first 15 minutes, it showed no significant difference from normal mice. But at minute 20, Sam noticed that many of its cells had begun to deform, crumple, and even burst. "A lot of large molecules in its body are being deactivated, including some important proteins, lots of lipids and various kinds of sugars." Sam was still staring at the screen, watching every little change.
"I suggest that we better mark the location of hydrogen peroxide with radioisotopes." Said William, "So we can look at the cells and hydrogen peroxide levels at the same time."
"That's a good suggestion! Wait for me and I'll get the 18O ready." A few minutes later, Sam injected water containing 18O into the mouse.
"Look! There's already so much hydrogen peroxide." Ranran shouted, pointing to the colored dots on the screen.
"That's about enough to turn its hair yellow. Look, there it is." This lively mouse in front of Natalie had been transformed into a yellow mouse. It twitched painfully, and now and then uttered a piercing groan.
"My God, what's that!" Ranran was surprised to find that 18O also captured large amounts of free oxygen.
"This is free oxygen, which is also called a free radical. An overdose in a short time can kill you!" William replied, "It seems that the amount of hydrogen peroxide has built up to a certain level."
The mouse suddenly stopped twitching. It became very quiet and just lay motionless in a dark corner. For a moment it raised its head and looked up painfully, hoping to see the blue sky again. But above it there was nothing but darkness, and in front of it was a huge camera that had recorded all its movements in the last few minutes of its life.
It shed two rows of crystal tears, but it was in vain. Highly toxic levels of hydrogen peroxide were slowly destroying its fragile body. Its eyes gradually lost their pride, and its heart and breathing slowed down. Even in the laboratory the air was extremely heavy.
Finally, the mouse closed its eyes and left the universe forever.
"I feel a little sorry for him." Ranran said, "In order to achieve our goal, a life has stopped its living rhythm like this..."
"Well, what else can we do? Do we have to take another man for an experiment?" Sam said, with a mixture of reluctance and sadness, "At least we've succeeded in getting the inhibitor. Oh, how miserable Thomson was! Such good experimental results were trapped. The cat has been trapped there for at least a month now. It's only a few kilometers from here, and I think you'll get there soon. It's a very dangerous place! Security is extremely tight. There are also hundreds of animals waiting to be rescued, most of whom were also taken there because they had unique genes. The owner of Capsule Laboratory wants to combine the benefits of all of these genes in order to create powerful, unbeatable genetic weapons!"
"Gosh, this is something to be reckoned with! But how do you know that?" The question that came out of William's mouth was sharp.
"I certainly know it, for I have spied on it." Uncle Sam gave William a small key, "This is the key to the underground hangar. Inside are two heavy fighter-bombers, each able to carry about 500 animals, so that must be enough. I sent these two planes out to spy at high altitude, and I built on my own a little spider robot. The latter managed to circumvent the entrance control system as well as all the security systems and know exactly what was going on inside. That's why I'm telling you a series of information that no one else has access to. You can ask them for further details."
"Oh, I see, thanks a lot! Where are the planes and the spider now?" Asked Photon eagerly.
Uncle Sam replied, "You go out from here to the end of the road, which should be near 23km road sign. Then go front-left into a thick forest. When you see an M word, stop and stamp your feet five times, and you'll find the hangar. Those two planes will know where the spider is. Let them take you there. If you'll excuse me, I'm so sorry, because I have to get back to refitting the engine to build another unique sports car. I'm going to make my Garage 95 the most famous refitting factory on the road!"
Before the party thanked him, Uncle Sam went to the testing room again. Maria walked them out.
"I must say how grateful I am again, William. You made my success come a month earlier." She said excitedly.
"It doesn't matter. I also believe you will be a great musician, as long as you remember these words, 'Art comes from life and is higher than life. ' "
"We look forward to going to your concerts in the future! See you soon!" Natalie exclaimed excitedly.
"Goodbye..." Tears began to blur Maria's eyes.