Chapter 26: The First Author (4)

Bae Sun-Mi requested twenty-four retinal degeneration mouse models from the Experiment Animal Resource Center. And on the second day, someone from the Research Support Department showed up with a cart that had six cages on it.

Each individual patient’s cells had to be used when making induced pluripotent stem cells, and this was the same for mice as well. Young-Joon harvested fibroblast cells from twenty out of the twenty-four mice and dedifferentiated them into stem cells by inserting the four genes into them.

But this was not all; Young-Joon still had to differentiate those cells into optic nerve cells. He used the lentivirus to introduce a few new kinds of genes and grew them carefully for ten days by controlling the expression level.

On Monday morning, Young-Joon opened the incubator and took out the nutrient broth. The broth contained hydrocortisone at a five micromolar concentration. It was also treated with EGF and dorsomorphin. He did it all according to what Rosaline directed him to do. The results were also exactly what Rosaline predicted: the stem cells differentiated into optic nerve cells. It worked.

‘I made optic nerve cells.’

Young-Joon felt chills down his body. He couldn’t believe that he really made artificial optic nerve cells in just ten days. Now, he had to inject this in the eyes of the retinal degeneration mice with a syringe.

“Lead Bae, could you help me?” Young-Joon asked.

He went into the animal experiment lab with Bae Sun-Mi, gave each of the mice a number, then picked one up. This was the difficult part; Young-Joon had to inject the optic nerve cells into the mouse’s eyes. He needed to anesthetize the mice and then precisely inject into the sub-retinal part of the eye. He needed a very experienced and skilled technician for this, and Bae Sun-Mi was this technician.

“I’m a little nervous. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this.”

Bae Sun-Mi gulped as she weighed the mouse.

“Two hundred seventy grams.”

“You’re going to anesthetize them with ketamine and xylazine, right? Into their arteries?” Young-Joon asked.

“Yes,” Bae Sun-Mi replied.

“The amount?”

Bae Sun-Mi tapped her calculator.

“1.04 grams of ketamine. And 248.4 milligrams of xylazine.”

Young-Joon prepared the anesthetic. Carefully, Bae Sun-Mi pierced the needle into the mouse’s artery and pushed in the anesthetic. After a moment, the mouse stopped moving.

Bae Sun-Mi put the mouse on the operating microscope so that the light was focused on the retina of the mouse. Then, she drew the optic nerve cells with a microsyringe.

“Phew...”

Bae Sun-Mi’s hands trembled a little. The end of the needle was right in front of the mouse’s eye, but it could not go in. She tried a few times, then put down the needle.

“I can’t do it...” She said. “It’s been too long since I’ve done it... I’m sorry.”

“I’ll try.”

Young-Joon sat in front of the microscope.

“Doctor Ryu? Have you done animal experiments before?”

“No.”

A scientist who has never done an animal experiment injecting something into the retina? It was no different from sacrificing one mouse, but Young-Joon could do it.

[Synchronization Mode Activate!]

Synchronization Mode allowed Young-Joon to observe biological processes at the angstrom level. The angstrom was usually a unit used to determine the movement of atoms. To put it into terms the public was more familiar with, it was basically 0.1 nanometers. Of course, 0.1 nanometers wasn’t a normal measurement used in everyday life. It was a rough estimate, but it was about one millionth of the width of a single strand of hair.

The end of the needle pierced above the iris of the eye. The nozzle, which smoothly followed the rim of the iris, stopped in front of the degenerated retina.

Sheee...

Young-Joon could hear the cells being dispersed from the nozzle as his senses were heightened because of his Synchronization Mode. The optic nerve cells were sticking to the retina of the mouse.

Bae Sun-Mi was in shock at the extremely precise injection.

“What? Are you a robot or something...”

“That should’ve been good, right?” Young-Joon asked.

“That was one of the most perfect injections I’ve seen.”

“Let’s do the rest of them quickly together.”

“I’ll do it, too.”

Bae Sun-Mi regained courage along with her skills from her prime time. With her, Young-Joon anesthetized each mouse and injected stem cells into their retina. Of course, Young-Joon was much faster; he did seven mice in the time Bae Sun-Mi did two, but that was it.

[No more fitness remaining.]

No matter how fast Young-Joon did it, his limit was seven.

“My eyes are a little sore... I’ll take my time doing them, haha...”

Young-Joon made an excuse.

“Of course. Don’t worry about it, Doctor Ryu.”

Bae Sun-Mi sped up a little.

‘It’s definitely much easier to have a technician like Bae Sun-Mi in the same team.’

Bae Sun-Mi injected optic nerve cells into the mice quickly and precisely. Now, all they had to do was wait for the mice to wake up from the anesthetic and recover their vision.

“Good work, Lead Bae.”

Young-Joon smiled brightly at Bae Sun-Mi.

“If this succeeds, I’m going to write a new patent and a paper. Your name will be in it, too.”

“Thank you. I’ll have my name on a big paper thanks to you, Doctor Ryu.”

“I look forward to your help on animal experiments.”

“Trust me. I was the best scientist at the Experiment Animal Resource Center back in the years.”

“Haha, thank you.”

Young-Joon left the lab and opened his phone. He had an email.

[Your manuscript has been accepted.]

It was an email from the editor of the

Science

journal. It said that the paper Young-Joon submitted had been approved.

* * *

There were three major journals in biology:

Science, Nature

, and

Cell

. They were the best scientific journals in the world, and every scientist’s dream. Most university professors had never published any papers in these journals.

It was natural as most papers in these kinds of journals usually had a very profound impact on the scientific community or provided extensive amounts of data through extremely strict experiments. Usually, most labs and researchers did not have the capital or facilities to do a project that big nor did they have the ability to produce data like that.

Then, which was the best:

Science, Nature,

or

Cell

? Each of them differed a little in their specialties, but

Science

was considered the best out of the three in terms of public image. It was a journal that had grown with the support of Thomas Edison and Graham Bell. It became a world-class journal as papers like Einstein’s study on the gravitational lens, Hubble’s study on the galaxy, the design and plan for the Apollo program, and early papers on AIDS.

Samuel, the editor-in-chief of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of

Science

, was in shock when he read the paper that was sent to him.

“What the...”[1]

The paper was about how they dedifferentiated normal cells into stem cells. He had just read the first part, and it was insane; it was the most revolutionary paper he had seen in the past few years.

Young-Joon Ryu, the first author and corresponding author. Soon-Yeol Koh, Hae-Rim Jung, and Dong-Hyun Park were the three authors after him. There were just four people.

From Samuel’s experience, a study like this had to be intensely studied for years by huge teams such as Harvard or Cold Spring Harbor. That would result in dozens of authors, and a few of them would probably be professors. Also, there would normally be two or three co-first authors, but this paper only had one first author and corresponding author.

“Young-Joon Ryu. Who is this person?” Samuel asked Jessie, an editor.

“He’s a scientist that’s working at A-Gen.”

“This is fake, right? It makes no sense that they did this with just four people, but the fact that this person is the only first author and the corresponding author means that they carried this project on their own. How did he...”

“It’s most likely true. They wrote the analysis of the process of dedifferentiation in the discussion part perfectly, right? Take a look. A-Gen is distributing press releases right now.”

“Oh my god...”

Samuel was at a loss for words after he read all of the discussion of the paper.

“Put this on the front page of the journal release next month. And let’s get an interview, too. We have an editor that can speak Korean, right? Or we can hire an interpreter...”

“But you know the letter they sent to the editor? The one separate from the paper manuscript,” Jessie said to Samuel.

“A letter?”

Samuel opened the letter attached to the back of the manuscript.

“If you read it, he asked us to not release it for a month and wait.”

“Why?”

“He said that he was going to differentiate the iPSCs back into optic nerve cells and get retinal degenerative mice to regain vision.”

“What kind of crazy talk is that?”

“He asked us to release it with this one as a special once the data comes out.”

Clatter.

Samuel dropped his pen on the floor. These induced pluripotent stem cells alone were big enough to grab the attention of scientists all around the world. It was a paper that would be on the front page of

Science

, the best scientific journal in the world. After it gets published, a lot of universities would probably invite him to their school to teach. If he went to a conference, countless scientists would come over for a handshake and ask him to do a project together.

‘But is he saying that it’s not enough? He’s going to achieve the next level of feats and publish it at once? Curing a retinal degenerative model by creating optic nerve cells? In a month? How can this be possible?’

“It... It doesn’t make sense. I have to send someone. Jessie, get some volunteers to meet Doctor Ryu to see the data in person and interview him. I have never heard of nor seen a scientist like him.”

“I’ll go.”

Jessie raised her hand up high like she was waiting for this.

“You?” Samuel asked.

“Yes.”

“But you can’t speak Korean.”

“I’ll bring an interpreter. I’ve always wanted to visit Korea. I’m a fan of BTS.”

“You’re not going on vacation, you know.”

“Of course. I’ll get the job done. I’m a little fascinated by Doctor Ryu now, too.”

* * *

Jessie got off at the Incheon International Airport with her interpreter and went to Lab Six of A-Gen. There were a lot of foreign scientists at the A-Gen labs, but Jessie was a woman who caught everyone’s eye. The scientists in the lab all glanced at the beautiful blonde woman wearing tight jeans, a sweater, and a white coat whenever she walked by.

Jessie went to the Life Creation Department’s office on the fourth floor of the building when it was time.

“Hello?”

Jessie greeted Young-Joon with a few lines of Korean she had prepared.

“Hello, my name is Ryu Young-Joon.”

Young-Joon shook hands with Jessie and went to the small conference room with her. She had brought her interpreter along with her, but she didn’t really need him for her meeting with Young-Joon since the usual language for science was English. Most papers were in English, so people wrote them in English as well. A lot of people did their meetings in English as well.

Young-Joon put the paper’s data up on the screen in the small conference room and explained each one to Jessie.

“SOX2 controls the expression of DKK1 to suppress the Wnt signal and maintains the ability of differentiation...”

Jessie’s expression grew more and more ecstatic as she listened to his lecture. To be honest, she was a little doubtful at first because it was so radical, but now she had faith.

“Fantastic... You said you’re going to publish this with a follow-up study, right?” Jessie asked.

“Yes. We’re treating the nerves by making stem cells from the fibroblast cells of the mice and differentiating them into optic nerve cells.”

“Is that experiment going well?”

“Would you like to see?”

Young-Joon took Jessie to the lab.

“You can leave the coffee here. You’re not allowed food and drinks in the lab,” Young-Joon said as he pointed to the cup of americano Jessie was holding.

They went into the animal lab together. A large box was divided into two rooms with a glass pane and black paper. The mice would be able to see the other room if Young-Joon moved the black paper, but these mice were retinal degenerative mice; normally, they should not be able to see anything.

“Number one to twenty are the mice that have been treated with stem cells, and mice numbered from twenty-one to twenty-four haven’t.”

When Young-Joon moved the paper, twenty mice that were numbered one through twenty were interested in the new space in the other room. As Young-Joon placed a fake piece of bread that had no odor in the other room, the mice that had been treated ran toward the glass wall. The other four did not react.

“Oh my god...”

Jessie stared at them in shock with her hand over her mouth.

“These mice had their vision restored?”

“We’ll produce a few more pieces of data to prove it. I’ve already written the paper. I will send it after I add the data and organize it a little.”

“Did you also do this, Doctor Ryu?”

“Me and Lead Scientist Bae Sun-Mi.”

“The two of you?”

“Yes.”

“...”

Koh Soon-Yeol, Park Dong-Hyun, and Jung Hae-Rim, the three people who were in his last paper were not here. There was someone new called Bae Sun-Mi, and again, the only first author and corresponding author was Young-Joon. Just him.

Jessie felt goosebumps all over her arms. She could just tell from how he explained the data that he had completely mastered this research. Induced pluripotent stem cells, the reconstruction of optic nerve cells and curing retinal degeneration in animal models: these great achievements that were going to be huge milestones in medicine basically had happened in the hands of this man.

Does this make sense? Jessie couldn’t even believe it after seeing it with her own eyes.

Was this really possible? Could one single scientist yield results like this?

These results would probably turn the scientific community as well as the entire medical industry upside down. It wouldn’t be able to cure all eye diseases, but he would be able to rescue quite a large fraction of blind people.

Jessie gulped.

“I will prepare clinical trials right after the publication,” Young-Joon said.

“... Doctor Ryu, this is research that could get you the Nobel Prize. Maybe not right away, but you will definitely receive the award when you’re older and more experienced.”

“Is that so?”

“I want to do an interview. I want to publish this as the cover of the next edition of

Science

and do a feature series on this. I want to put your interview and picture on the front page.”

Jessie knew that she couldn’t let this go. This could be an interview more important than the huge paper on stem cells and optic nerve treatment.

A new star of biology. The most revolutionary person after Darwin.

Jessie knew that she could not lose him to

Nature

or

Cell

.

Science

had to be the first one to report that a genius like Young-Joon took a giant step to advance science.

1. Samuel and Jessie, editors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, are speaking in English. ?