Chapter 146: Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (1)

Tanya Manker’s artificial intelligence program succeeded in predicting red mold. Worries about the safety of cultured meat completely disappeared after the legislative hearing. Now, experts on food supply who emphasized the food crisis excitedly began to advertise the need for new technology everywhere.

With the United States, one of the countries with the most developed livestock industry, leading the charge, governments around the world drew up a long-term plan for ten years. They would gradually reduce the number of traditional farms and replace it with a field to grow Kochia; this would allow them to preserve farmers’ profits by making use of the land instead of it being idle. They would also help meat processing industries train their employees to transform their operations into cultured meat production facilities and maintain employment.

“If only things could go according to plan.”

Young-Joon was spending his time sitting on a hill near a cornfield in Iowa.

Hum...

The sound of light airplanes flying overhead echoed in the sky. Large amounts of red mold treatment were being sprayed over the cornfields five times a day.

“It’s a relief that there is a cure,” Young-Joon said.

—A-Gen is probably really happy since they sold a ton of the treatment to the U.S. government.

“Probably.”

Pshh...

The planes poured the treatment onto the cornfield again.

—It looks like it’s raining.

Rosaline popped out of Young-Joon’s body. She began running towards the center of the cornfield.

“Where are you going?”

—I want to go inside.

Rosaline ran into the corn stalks that were taller than her. The treatment poured onto her, but her clothes or hair didn’t get wet at all. After observing the sky, she looked around at the corn ears.

—This drug is a fat-dissolving compound with a steroid cure.

Rosaline said.

After soaking into the ground, the treatment would absorb through the roots of the corn and travel along the sieve tube.

Rosaline shared her vision with Young-Joon. The treatment went into the corn and the leaves and entered the alpha receptors of the fungus. The twenty-fourth carbon of the treatment acted on the back of the hyphae-forming material in the fungus.

—It works as a Lewis acid.

Rosaline said

—The fungus dies as the hyphae-forming material is destroyed.

‘You can show me this without using fitness now?’

Young-Joon chuckled. Rosaline turned and glanced at him.

—No. I used fitness.

‘Ugh...’

—I didn’t think I would need to get permission because I only used a little.

‘It’s okay.’

Rosaline stopped Synchronization Mode, which she turned on herself, and returned to Young-Joon.

—That treatment looks similar to prednisolone.

“Prednisolone?”

—It makes sense as they are both steroids.

“What is prednisolone?”

—It’s a hepatitis treatment. It’s one of the two pills you were taking when you first created me. The other one was pentoxifylline.

* * *

“If Doctor Ryu says that he is going to terraform Mars next week, I’m going to trust him and buy land on Mars,” David said in the car with a loud chuckle.

“Did you make some profit?” asked his driver, who had worked for him for thirty years.

“It was huge. We increased production by fifty percent, but we should have increased it by about two hundred percent. We sold all of it, no inventory left. And the company image improved a lot, too.”

“Really?”

“I mean, Conson & Colson was the national pharmaceutical company of the United States, right? We already had a pretty good company image. But on top of that, we became the company that had the foresight to see the potential in Doctor Ryu’s absurd prophecy,” David said as he snapped his fingers. “He is a genius. I hope to maintain a good business relationship with him.”

“When you first saw him, you tried to dominate the diagnostic market first to keep Doctor Ryu in check, right?”

“Well, I didn’t know that he was such a genius back then,” David said. “When brilliant people and geniuses come along, company executives that have a vested interest are bound to try to consume them.”

“But not now?”

“You have to follow them if they are overwhelmingly brilliant,” David said. “I believe that someone like Doctor Ryu Young-Joon is unprecedented in the history of humanity. He used to be compared to people like Einstein, but I think he’s past that level now.”

“Is that so?”

“You can see it in the way he made everything in this cultured meat project go according to his plan. He’s not just a scientifically brilliant scientist who can develop good drugs; being able to deliver a technology that could transform an industry as large as this while minimizing the noise like that is beyond the capabilities of a normal human being.”

“It was really fascinating. I was shocked to see that red mold actually reemerged. Plus, he does things like analyze the nutrient composition of cultured meat on live television...”

“The idea of protecting the livelihood of most of the people who were already in the industry is amazing. Scientists don’t usually think of things like that because they’ve fulfilled their responsibility by providing the new technology,” David said.

“I see.”

“I’m just glad that an ordinary person like me can live in the same generation as a giant like him.”

“If you’re just an ordinary person, what does that make the rest of us? Hahaha.”

“Compared to Doctor Ryu, everyone is just a common, ordinary citizen. Now, I think Doctor Ryu is doing science in all fields, not just pharmaceuticals. I have high expectations for what he will do next.”

* * *

On the day that Young-Joon was returning to Korea, he met Campbell. As a state guest, Campbell was personally seeing him off. This was also quite unusual, but as a politician, Campbell used Young-Joon’s image well. Young-Joon was someone who had stopped a national crisis and someone who established a cancer laboratory to begin a long-term project with the United States. This was enough justification; Young-Joon didn’t like to get involved in politics, but he didn’t have any reason or grounds to refuse Campbell’s offer to thank him and see him off.

“The United States of America is greatly indebted to Doctor Ryu Young-Joon from this red mold outbreak. I hope we can maintain a positive relationship.”

Campbell shook Young-Joon’s hand and turned around to face the camera.

Click! Click!

Cameras flashed from all over.

“The White House has arranged a plane for you. I hope you have a comfortable return home,” Campbell said.

Just like Campbell said, the way back was very nice and comfortable. Being treated as a state guest, Young-Joon spent his time leisurely in the White House’s private jet. It had been a while since he had relaxed.

“What are you going to study when you get back?” Kim Chul-Kwon asked.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking of finishing up the things I have already started instead of starting a new research project,” Young-Joon said.

“Like what?”

“I started a lot of things, so I have a lot to finish as well. For example, probiotics.”

“Probiotics?”

“You have to keep taking Amuc to treat diabetes right now, but we can cure diabetes if we create a gut environment where the microorganism can produce Amuc by itself.”

“I see.”

𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

“But since it’s a living bacteria with edited genes... It’s difficult to get approval for a clinical trial. That’s what I’m thinking about,” Young-Joon said.

‘Wait.’

Now that he thought of it, his results about probiotics changed depending on Rosaline’s level. At first, all Rosaline said was to use a bacteria called

Clorotonis limuvitus

. When Rosaline became level three and he was able to use [Advice], Rosaline told him to manipulate the genes of the bacteria to treat diabetes.

‘Rosaline is level twenty right now.’

Young-Joon also had a powerful skill called Simulation Mode.

—Do you want me to look at probiotics again?

Rosaline asked.

‘Yes, please.’

[Activate Simulation Mode]

A message window popped in front of Young-Joon’s eyes. His vision faded out into pitch black.

“I’m tired. I’m going to take a short nap,” Young-Joon said to Kim Chul-Kwon and calmly closed his eyes.

He leaned back on his chair and focused on the scene in front of his eyes. The small, intricate and complex system of the bacteria appeared.

—This is the microorganism empire.

Rosaline said.

—Biologically, humans have three cell systems.

‘Three?’

—

The first is the somatic cell system. These are cells that exist in a newborn baby’s body and mature during growth but don’t divide much afterward. They are difficult to regenerate, but they are relatively strong and used until people die.

‘And the other two?’

—

The other is the immune system. Because the most dangerous enemy that threatens the somatic cells is foreign invaders, they need a system to defend against that. That is the immune system. White blood cells, which are made in the bone marrow, constantly circulate the body and look for foreign invaders.

Rosaline said.

—And surprisingly, there are foreign invaders that have established themselves in the human body. That is the empire of microorganisms: the microbiome. You can think of them as foreign individuals who have such a huge business in the country that the government cannot touch them.

‘And you’re saying that the human body is maintained from the harmony of these three systems?’

—

Yes. And this might be obvious, but the immune system is the most interested in the microbiome. You can say that most of the immune reactions happen in the intestines. As such, developing a well-crafted and amazing probiotics is not just simply effective for diabetes or weight loss.

Rosaline said.

—Because manipulating the microbiome means manipulating the immune system.

‘I get it now. Like how diabetes was a type of autoimmune disorder, but you can treat it with probiotics now...’

—

You can treat most autoimmune diseases and allergies. Should I list some?

Rosaline said.

—What Simulation Mode is saying right now is rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Sjogren’s syndrome, psoriasis, ulcerative colitis, some forms of autism, Crohn’s disease, ankylosing spondylitis, a few types of anemia, asthma, some forms of Lou Gehrig’s disease, dementia, and most allergies.

‘...’

—

And this isn’t a treatment, it’s a prevention.

There were three stages to the pharmaceutical industry: prevention, diagnosis, treatment. Excluding the vaccine, most of the things Young-Joon had done until now were limited to treatment, but this was different.

‘How many genes have to be edited to see those results?’

—

You have to use two more species of bacteria other than

Clorotonis limuvitus

. And you have to modify a total of 107 locations.

‘Alright. Thanks. End Simulation Mode.’

[Stop Simulation Mode]

Young-Joon, who minimized the window and took a sip of wine, began thinking.

‘How do I get approval for that ridiculous probiotics?’

Even eating cooked corn and beans with a couple edited genes created several issues. If Young-Joon proposed a crazy idea to put a live bacteria with one hundred seven genes edited into someone’s gut? No matter how much Young-Joon had shown the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, he couldn’t imagine them just saying yes. Also, he didn’t want them to give him approval just because he was Young-Joon, as that would be a violation of research ethics.

‘... Wait. But have I contemplated things of this magnitude before?’

His scale of thinking had changed at some point. Young-Joon was originally making one drug for single diseases, like the flu treatment, but his scale of thinking had changed after trying to conquer cancer. Now, he was thinking of ways to cure all those autoimmune diseases at once.

‘Is this because of Rosaline?’

Young-Joon took a sip of his wine.

[Rosaline has decomposed the alcohol.]

—Don’t drink wine. Your blood vessels smell like ethanol. I’m too lazy to clean it.

Rosaline said.

‘Oh... Alright.’