Chapter 149: Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (4)

Song Jong-Hos condition was pretty severe. Shin Jung-Ju didnt tell Young-Joon, but she sighed as she read his medical history.

[Those voices made them do it and they said they eat red when they stop studying. Monks who hit flames at the temple took out the wire-tapping chip, but the sound leaked out from the chip water drop water drop ugrhtakgyaktakdkadak]

[I wore a hoodie and the car made an uneven beep sound the monks made snot by boom boom boom. They were hard on me. I was bathing but when I was strong, I wore the sunset hat in the evening and scrubbed it hard.]

It was written by Song Jong-Ho.

Incoherence.

This was one of the classic symptoms of chronic schizophrenia: disorganized language with no coherent argument, fragmented and meaningless logical progressions that were all over the place, resulting in the sentence making no sense at all. Song Jong-Hos condition was pretty advanced. Additionally, he also had circumstantiality and neologism: this was when the patient spoke nonsense without a point and created new words that didnt exist. They were both typical symptoms of severe schizophrenia.

I prescribed a combination of clozapine, risperidone, and an SSRI, an antidepressant. I hope it will be okay, Shin Jung-Ju said as she read the prescription history.

This prescription was from the insistence of his guardian, Song Ji-Hyun. Originally, Shin Jung-Ju was only going to prescribe clozapine. However, Song Ji-Hyun interfered with the prescription, talking about the guidelines and articles from the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP). It was a bit of a bold decision from Shin Jung-Jus perspective, but there was nothing she could not do.

Honestly, it seems like she knows more about schizophrenia than I do

It made sense that Song Ji-Hyun knew a lot about new drugs since she was a pharmacist and a famous scientist who developed drugs, but even considering that, her depth of knowledge was incredible. Her knowledge of schizophrenia was probably one of the best in Korea.

They say that cancer patients know as much about anticancer as doctors because there are so many ways to study.

Shin Jung-Ju clicked her tongue.

* * *

Jong-Ho, you have to take your medicine.

Song Ji-Hyun, who returned home, gave the drug to her brother. It was always a battle to make Song Jong-Ho take his medicine. It was nearly impossible for a woman to physically control a man who was one hundred ninety centimeters tall and had become one hundred twenty kilograms due to the side effects of medication. Talking to him was impossible because his language was broken, and she could not match his physical force. Her father who could physically control Song Jong-Ho to some extent was not home, so Song Ji-Hyun had to give it to him on her own.

Of course, this wasnt the first time this had happened. As if she was trying to subdue an animal that wouldnt listen to her and give it medicine, she shoved a pill into Song Jong-Hos mouth with her finger and tried to give him water.

Aghhh!

However, Song Jong-Ho quickly spat it out when the pill entered his mouth.

You need to take this to get better.

Song Ji-Hyun put the pill that had fallen out of his mouth back in, but he spat it out again. After thirty minutes of wrestling and getting saliva and water everywhere, she finally succeeded in getting him to swallow a single pill.

He also needs to take risperidone and SSRI

The treatment for schizophrenia was a dopamine inhibitor. After intense research on schizophrenia, modern medicine discovered one important truth, which was that dopamine was abnormally overexpressed in the brains of patients with schizophrenia. This large amount of dopamine was what created a variety of problems in the brain. As such, they predicted that inhibiting dopamine would be able to reduce the symptoms.

This turned out to be correct, and dopamine inhibitors could be given to patients with early-stage schizophrenia and significantly improve the condition. This was a huge step in psychiatry.

Patients had fewer hallucinations and delusions, and their cognitive abilities were restored. They were able to distinguish between the mental world where hallucinations and delusions occurred and the mental world when they were normal. From that point, the patient could regularly take the drug on their own to manage their symptoms, like diabetes, and live a relatively normal life.

Lets take this, too.

Song Ji-Hyun was able to give him risperidone. Thankfully, it didnt take her as long this time. Clozapine and risperidone were both domaine inhibitors. They were used in combination to treat severely ill patients. But the treatment was brutal.

Song Ji-Hyun gulped. She saw Song Jong-Hos eyes after taking the medicine. Her heart felt heavy.

Dopamine was the happy hormone; this hormone was usually released when people were delight, joyful, and happy, and it made people feel excited. Inhibiting that dopamine meant that it left the patient feeling incredibly helpless and depressed.

... All you need to take now is the SSRI.

Song Ji-Hyun took out another pill. SSRI stood for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which meant that this was an antidepressant. She took out the SSRI and put it near Song Jong-Hos mouth.

Slap!

Song Jong-Ho aggressively slapped away her hand.

Ugh

Youll feel better after taking this. Its okay. Come here.

Song Ji-Hyun picked up the pill that had fallen onto the ground.

Die!

Song Jong-Ho swatted away the medicine again. This time, his fingertips also hit Song Ji-Hyuns cheek.

Ahh!

His hand was the size of Song Ji-Hyuns head. Her head turned from the force even though Song Jong-Hos hand just barely hit her.

...

She caressed her cheek. She picked up the pill again.

* * *

How is it? Young-Joon asked Rosaline as he took out the sample from the centrifuge. The sample contained cell lysate. The substances inside the lysate separated by weight when it was put in a centrifuge and a strong force of gravity was applied to it; the heavier components went to the bottom. After an hour of separation, layers formed in the liquid, just like how the heavier sand in muddy water would sink down and separate from the water if it was left long enough.

Its complete.

Rosaline said.

Separate the light blue portion in the thirteenth layer from the bottom. That is where the mitochondria is.

The thirteenth from the bottom?

Young-Joon squinted and stared at the fifty-milliliter Falcon plastic tube.

There are thirteen layers in this sample?

The boundaries of the separated layers could not be distinguished because the sample was nearly transparent and colorless. When Young-Joon frowned, Rosalien intervened.

Uh, not there. Oh, the human eye cannot distinguish those as different layers.

Rosaline popped out of Young-Joons body.

Oh well. I will show it to you.

She pointed at the bottom of the Falcon tube.

This part.

Theres a separated layer here?

If its too difficult, should I do it for you? I will extract it if you give me control of your hand for a moment.

Its fine. Hey, I did biology experiments for ten years, too, Young-Joon said as if his pride was hurt.

Then try it. I will coach you.

Young-Joon held the pipette, drew out the solution, carefully isolating the liquid from the target layer.

Did I do it?

You drew out some impurities, but it was good enough.

Arent those impurities going to be removed during the culturing process anyway?

Thats right.

But how are we going to culture mitochondria?

I will teach you that right now. Its not very hard because the mitochondria was originally a separate organism.

The concept of an organism was quite vague, as an organism usually meant a singular entity with one identity. However, even the most basic unit such as the cell had a collection of organisms, and the mitochondrion was the most well-known one.

About 2.1 billion years ago, there was an unusual prokaryotic cell that was much larger than the rest of the microscopic organisms. One day, it accidentally absorbed a bacterium. The bacteria was not digested inside the prokaryote as food, and the bacteria didnt destroy the prokaryote as a pathogen. Instead, the bacteria came to the very unusual conclusion that they were going to have a symbiotic relationship. It was the moment when two organisms from different microworlds joined hands. It was the birth of the greatest miracle of biology on Earth: the eukaryote, the common ancestor of animals and plants, including all insects, fish, mammals, reptiles, angiosperms, ferns, and more.

The eukaryote was infected by countless viruses and absorbed them into its genes. Viruses lived in symbiosis with eukaryotic cells and helped them evolve in the form of transposons. One cell was like a collection of many organisms.

At some point, the eukaryotic cell decided it was no longer going to live alone as a single cell. They formed colonies and invented a cellular society where many cells grouped together; this was the emergence of multicellular life.

As the ozone layer formed later and reduced the amount of ultraviolet light reaching the surface of land, the multicellular organism moved onto land. This was about five hundred million years ago, and all live on Earth today descended from it.

It had been living as a part of eukaryotic cells for 2.1 billion years. It has probably lost a lot of its ability to function as an independent organism, but it will be able to grow with a few tweaks.

Alright, lets try it. How do we do it?

First, lets recreate the environment of the time when the mitochondria were still bacteria.

Rosaline said.

Were going to recreate the ocean that existed 2.4 billion years ago. Lets start with the PBS solution. Put four hundred grams of sodium into the 1X PBS solution on the shelf.

Four hundred grams of sodium.

Then, we have to remove the oxygen from it. The ocean was starting to produce oxygen, but only in small amounts. And it reacts first with minerals like marble and iron, so it wasnt enough for organisms to use.

Alright

And we have to increase the concentration of methane. Do you think you can do that?

And then what?

Now, we need to put the genes into the mitochondria. Mitochondria have lost a lot of their own genes over the last 2.1 billion years. Theyve been importing things made by the eukaryotic cells own genes and using it, so lets activate their domestic economy that was missing.

Youre getting so eloquent now. I kind of want to use your domestic economy joke.

You have to say that it was mine if you use it.

* * *

Young-Joon cultured the mitochondria for four days. It grew like crazy and filled a liter of culture liquid. Young-Joon took a photo of them under an electron microscope and recorded values like the O.D. The mere fact that he succeeded in restoring mitochondria to primitive bacteria and grew it was worthy of the cover of

Science

. Even though it didn't have any medical or industrial applications, it had a great academic value.

However, Young-Joon did not write a paper yet as he still had a lot to do with this.

Heres the one hundred seven genes you requested.

The DNA Synthesis Team at A-Gen sent Young-Joon a large amount of freeze-dried DNA.

But where are you going to use all this DNA? the employee who delivered it asked in puzzlement.

I am going to develop a new treatment. The details are still a secret, but I will give it to the scientists when I get some results. Im doing it myself because its a pilot experiment, Young-Joon said.

Electroporation was used to put the genes into the mitochondria. This technique used an electrical impulse to tear the cell membrane and insert the DNA. Most microbes didnt survive the damage and died, but it didnt matter, as he just had to recover the survivors and culture them. The cells cultured twice would all have new genes.

Now, lets do animal experiments.

Rosaline said.

Young-Joon got a mouse model of schizophrenia from the A-Gen Research Support Center. The mouse had its dopamine-expressing gene manipulated to make it behave similarly to those with schizophrenia. If Young-Joon succeeded here, he would be taking the first step toward a clinical trial.

Well need a ton of animal data to prove its safety to get this crazy new drug approved for clinical use, but

Young-Joon stared at the cage containing thirty mice.