Half a month later.

Chen Chen stopped the instrument in his hand and stretched out in front of the 100-level ultra-clean workbench, a flash of excitement flashed in his eyes.

"The induction of the fertilized egg of clone No. 30 is complete and can be implanted inside the mother."

Chen Chen began to fill in the experimental records as he spoke, and the experimental recorder worn on his head faithfully recorded every frame, which would become the most valuable data in the future.

At this time, the whole experiment was still in the early stage, that is, the cloning stage, Chen Chen needed to rely on a micromanipulator to remove the nucleus of a total of 36 egg cells and implant another nucleus to form a cloned zygote.

This is commonly known as "somatic nuclear transfer reprogramming".

The road of cloning technology has not been smooth, from 1938, when German embryologists first proposed the concept of cloning, to the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996, and then to the discovery in 2012 that caffeine can increase the success rate of reprogramming primate egg cells, human cloning technology has developed for nearly a century.

Today, cloning technology has matured and commercialized, and many people are willing to spend a lot of money to clone dead pets, and the emergence of profitable pet cloning companies is enough to show that cloning technology has become more and more mature.

Because of this, Chen Chen was able to process dozens of SD rat clone fertilized eggs in half a month.

However, technological maturity does not mean that it is simple.

What is cloning?

There is a fable in the West:

It is said that there is a country in which there is a poisonous spring in which anyone who drinks it will go crazy and become insane.

All the subjects of the country drank from this spring and fell into a state of madness, but the king did not drink it, so he did not go mad with it.

As a result, the madmen of the whole country felt that the king was mentally problematic, so they tied the king up and tried to cure his madness.

In the end, the king could not stand the torture, so he could only take the initiative to drink the spring water and go crazy with the people......

And cloning is a true reflection of this parable.

In a cell, there are dozens of substances such as cell membrane, cytoplasm, organelles and nucleus, and the most important of them is the nucleus, which is an organ that contains all the genetic information in the cell.

Generally speaking, in order for a cell to carry out activities, it must first declare to the nucleus, and after the nucleus approves it, it will call the relevant genes, and then let a molecule called messenger RNA take the genetic information out so that the relevant organelles can carry out their own commands.

It can be said that in the cell, the nucleus is the king, and the other structures and components in the cell are the subjects.

But if one day, scientists replace the nucleus of the cell, especially the egg cell, and humans remove the nucleus of the egg cell, and stuff the nucleus of the somatic cell of the object to be cloned into the egg cell instead.

Then, scientists use electric currents and chemicals to change the characteristics of this egg cell, so that it turns into a fertilized egg, as if the whole country was drinking poisoned spring water, and a scene in the fable occurred.

The subjects asked the nucleus to give orders to let the fertilized egg develop, but this new nucleus refused in his heart, after all, he is not the nucleus of the egg cell, and if you let me develop the fertilized egg, I will develop, and my body nucleus is a mutation, cancerous cell, swallowed by white blood cells, and will never develop!

However, with the continuous pressure from his subjects, this somatic nucleus finally felt "angry" and had to change its position and transform itself into the nucleus of an egg cell.

At this point, the egg cell has successfully developed into an embryo, which will be implanted into the uterus of a mother, and eventually a clone will be born.

And this life has exactly the same genes as the owner of the nucleus flowing in its body.

Clone successful!

Of course, in practice, the difficulty is still very huge, not to mention the damage of those chemical agents, just changing the cell nucleus to the egg cell is equivalent to a major operation.

After all, the egg cell needs to remove the nucleus first, and then implant the allogeneic nucleus.

It is only Chen Chen who has taken NZT48 to maintain such an efficient success rate.

At this moment, there was a knock on the door behind Chen Chen, and Wang Wei's voice came in.

"Chenzi, the second batch of clones was successfully born, and no hidden diseases have been found for the time being."

Unlike Chen Chen, who was full of energy, Wang Wei's voice carried tiredness that could not be concealed.

"Okay, I'll come right over."

Chen Chen stood up and began to clean up the workbench in front of him, and after freezing a few precious cloned fertilized eggs, he hurried towards another room.

As soon as he entered the door, Chen Chen heard a squeak, which was the cry of several newly-born rats, and Wang Wei and Xia Yin were sitting in front of the cage, silently observing.

The newborn rat cub was red all over, with only two black spots the size of sesame seeds in the eyes area, and it squeaked like a red worm.

"Ready to start, extract neural stem cells to make a cell suspension."

"Okay."

Wang Wei nodded, after a month of working together, Wang Wei had been completely impressed by Chen Chen's skills and perseverance, if it weren't for Chen Chen, no student in the entire Academy of Biological Sciences would have been able to do this.

And Xia Yin on the side opened her mouth, looking at a bunch of newborn rats who didn't even open their eyes, showing hesitation, "Do we really want to do it now?" ”

"Since you have chosen this line, do not have mercy." Chen Chen said lightly, "As long as you maintain respect for this group of animals who have dedicated their lives to science, it is enough." ”

"......" Xia Yin was silent.

Immediately, the three of them began to compare the genes of the cloned rat cub with the original owner, and after confirming that there were no mistakes, they executed him.

The poor newborn rat boy lost his life completely before he could open his eyes to see the world.

"Is the ice PBS dish ready?" Chen Chen asked.

"Here." Xia Yin cautiously brought a few petri dishes and looked at Wang Wei, "You can start." ”

"Okay."

Wang Wei took the petri dish and began to execute the rats on the operating table and remove the brain tissue from the rats' corpses.

He then placed the brains of the rats in an ice PBS dish, expertly isolated the hippocampus, put them in buffer, and then, like an assembly line, turned around again to handle the second rat.

Chen Chen walked to the position in front of Wang Wei, cut the hippocampus into fine pieces, added 0.25% trypsin at the same time, and then put it in the 37-degree incubator, and said to Xia Yin, "Is the planting liquid ready?" ”

"Ready." Xia Yin removed the test tube from the shelf.

Chen Chen nodded, turned to the second petri dish that Wang Wei had handled, and began to operate.

Xia Yin waited for two minutes, then took out the petri dish from the incubator, put it in the centrifuge to separate, and then added the planting liquid to blow to form a cell suspension.

"Dididi!"

At that moment, the electronic alarm clock in the laboratory rang, and it was already nine o'clock in the evening.

"Alright, that's all for today's experiment."

Although there was still unfinished work, Chen Chen had no intention of stopping at all, he directly put down the tools in his hand, packed up his things, and turned around and walked towards the outside of the laboratory.

"But we're still half an hour away from finishing today's work?" Wang Wei was puzzled.

"Routine is the most important thing." Chen Chen shook his head and said solemnly, "If you want to do this business for a long time, you can't do it without a good body." ”

Watching Chen Chen leave, Wang Wei and Xia Yin looked at each other.

"Chen Chen is really strange."

Xia Yin complained, "Racing against time and energetic at work, one person can do the workload of several people, but once it comes to the time he sets for getting off work, he is unwilling to work for an extra second......"

"Maybe that's the quirk of scientists?"

Wang Wei shook his head, "Let's clean up and do the rest tomorrow." ”

"Okay."

Xia Yin nodded, and the two left the laboratory one after another.