“The Genesis Project,” Katie prompted.
The professor’s eyebrows rose. “You know of this?”
“I found it written in the margins of one of Dmitri’s textbooks.” She considered telling him of her discovery of the term in one of his lab notebooks but decided against it. Her prying had caused enough problems already, and she didn’t want her professor to think she was untrustworthy. “Baba explained a little about my grandfather’s research, although I still don’t know any of the scientific details. That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I am sorry that I didn’t share this with you before.”
“It’s OK, Dr. Kozlov,” Katie said touching his hand. “With everything that’s gone on in the past couple of weeks, I can certainly understand why. Would you tell me now?”
The professor drew the lapels of his overcoat around his neck as he recalled the details of the research. “Your grandfather found the frozen remains of a large vertebrate mammal. Along with this creature, he found some tissue that he believed was the placental lining of a partially successful birth. There were two fully developed fetuses within the afterbirth. Stillbirths are not uncommon when animals give birth to multiple offspring at once.”
“Did he tell you where he found them?” Jake asked.
“It was somewhere in Western Asia…Tibet, I think. I’d just finished graduate school and was doing some independent work in paleo-zoology. Dmitri knew of me through a mutual friend so he trusted that I would keep his work quiet. He had also heard of our new genetics laboratory and hoped we could shed some light on his discovery. His specimen was well preserved.”
“Were you able to isolate intact DNA?” Katie asked.
“It was certainly better than the wooly mammoth material we’ve been working with lately. My lab assistant was the one who really made the breakthrough. His specialty was gene sequencing.” He turned to Jake. “That is recombining DNA fragments by seeing where the base pairs overlap. After my assistant extracted DNA from the sample and started looking at it, he found the typical short, broken strands like we’ve seen in our wooly mammoth work. But then he found something very odd from his x-ray diffraction tests. There were segments of DNA that were folded into itself. This was in the early days of x-ray crystallography when we didn’t really know how to use the technology, but it was clear that these folds were not random. They had a distinct chemical structure.”
“A mutation,” Katie asserted.
“That’s what we thought at first,” the professor replied, “something like Slipped Strand Mispairing.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me there,” Jake said.
“Think of it this way,” the professor replied. “You’ve seen a normal DNA strand?”
Jake nodded. “It looks like a spiral staircase.”
“Along that staircase, there are nucleotides, which are chemical molecules made up of four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. These bases pair off and form the steps of the staircase. In Dmitri’s tissue, we found that some of the cytosine molecules had an additional chemical functionality. No one had ever seen it before, but it’s come to be known as methylation. The four DNA bases, which every student learns in an introductory biology course, are not the entire picture. Through methylation, a range of organic molecules can be attached to the common bases, thus forming a new class of nucleotides. We have also found that proteins called Tet are present when methylation occurs. Even today, this process is only marginally understood. Where does Tet come from? What is its complete function? Are there other proteins which act in a similar manner?” The professor shrugged. “There are a lot of unanswered questions. We are a long way off, but controlling methylation could have a profound impact on medical research.”
“But this has nothing to do with mutations?” Jake asked.
“No. We’ve learned that methylation can be controlled by the environment of the organism. In response to stress, for example, methylation controls the turning on and off of certain genes. When these genes are copied, the same changes show up in the new DNA. The organism and perhaps its offspring are better adapted for dealing with the adverse stimuli. Mutations, however, are random and almost always destructive. Sometimes during replication, which is the making of a new DNA strand from the old one, the molecule can denature. When the two strands rejoin, they reattach where they shouldn’t. This leads to insertions or deletions in the new DNA. It’s a mutation called Slipped Strand Mispairing, or SSM. That’s a common process cited by evolutionists.”
“You said that you originally considered SSM with my grandfather’s material,” Katie reminded him.
“SSM and other mutations can affect long segments of the DNA molecule. In theory, depending on the magnitude and location of these mutations, the organism can show distinct irregularities in its normal physiology. It is much more likely, however, that an affected animal will die from it. When we began to analyze Dmitri’s samples, we dismissed SSM because the anomaly was so massive and widespread. This adult animal should not have lived, let alone reproduce.”
“Did the DNA from her offspring show that same anomaly?” Jake questioned.
“Our comparison of their DNA with the mother’s formed the basis of an interesting hypothesis,” the professor answered, “and supported what your grandfather was after. One of the associate professors from the mathematics department learned of our research and offered her help. She was a gifted mathematician and approached the problem from a probability standpoint. What she discovered was truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen. When DNA replicates, the strands separate and new strands, which are identical to the old ones, are added in their place. Now there are two DNA strands which are identical. Each DNA molecule holds a specific set of instructions.”
“It’s like copying a computer file to a thumb drive,” Jake said. “All of the data is transmitted.”
“That’s right,” the professor nodded. “We continued working on the tissue, even after your grandfather disappeared. As technology advanced, we eventually isolated an allele—one half of a gene pair that coded for red blood cell development.”
“Red blood cells?” Katie asked.
“Your grandfather brought back blood samples from both the mother and her calves. Her blood cells were the typical biconcave discs like most vertebrates have, including humans. Her calves exhibited a genetic disease called hereditary elliptocytosis.”
“When red blood cells are elliptically shaped instead of circular,” Katie filled in.
“Yes, and a disease not that uncommon,” the professor continued, “even in humans. The interesting thing is that Dmitri classified the animal as Procamelus, an ancestor of the modern day camel that supposedly lived in the Miocene Period some 20 million years ago. All camels have elliptically shaped red blood cells. It’s thought to facilitate full body function even when water intake has ceased.”
“But the mother didn’t have this trait,” Jake said.
“No,” Kozlov shook his head, “but what’s stranger is the physiology of the offspring. The Procamelus had no hump as you would find in the one-humped camels of Africa or the two-humped Bactrian camels of Asia. Humps are fatty tissue that store water and don’t develop in young camels until they are weaned. One of her offspring was in the early stages of hump development.”
“How’s it even possible that the baby had a hump?” Katie asked. “Mutations don’t cause distinct physiological characteristics that can define a species. A moose doesn’t give birth to deer.”
“Ah,” the professor raised his finger, “but our x-ray diffraction tests were moving us completely away from mutations. We didn’t understand methylation at the time, but we could measure its frequency in both the mother and her calves. This is also where our mathematics professor offered her assistance. After determining a probability based on relative configuration changes in their DNA, she came up with a detailed math model that could explain the function of the DNA anomaly. The mother suffered from a
much more pronounced folding in her DNA than did either of her offspring. If they had lived to reproduce, their offspring would likely have exhibited traits more like their own, assuming that this anomaly was coding for distinct characteristics like blood cell development. When she compared the ratios of unaffected DNA to methylated DNA in both the mother and her calves, she found a linear regression, which could only have been there by design. In short, what the math model showed was that this Procamelus mother had the ability to give birth to very different offspring. Each time the DNA replicated, a variety of base pair combinations became possible. The variety would then diminish with subsequent generations. In essence, from this one animal, many different animals of a similar kind could come into existence. If you paired two of them, they would subdivide, and so would their offspring, and so on until this ever shrinking DNA anomaly returned to a normal configuration as animals have today. Within a few generations, from just two of these animals, there could conceivably come every variant within a family of animals. Instant diversification, perhaps driven by changes to the environment in a single generation. The true origin of species.”
“Oh my goodness!” Katie blurted. “Do you understand the significance?”
“Two of every kind,” Jake shared her thoughts. “God told Noah to take two of every kind of animal onto the ark.”
“That’s right,” she exclaimed. “It wasn’t two of every animal in existence today. It was two of every kind. Creationists have proclaimed this for years. Two of every animal in existence today would never have fit on the ark.”
“But two of every kind would!” Jake blurted out.
“If this could be proven,” the professor added, “it would be irrefutable evidence of diversity by design. It has nothing to do with mutations over millions of years. Natural selection goes away. With each generation, this ZIP gene, as I’ve come to call it, decompressed until no more changes were possible. DNA as it exists today can only replicate itself.”
“This is straight out of the biblical account in Genesis,” Jake asserted. “It could even explain the diversity we see in the different races of mankind.”
“Hence the name, Genesis Project,” the professor explained.
“The results were never published,” Katie said.
Kozlov shook his head. “It was the Soviet Union. You could be sent to Siberia for much less.”
“Do you still have the data?” Katie asked.
“No. Nor any of the tissue. Though I could never prove it, I believe it was stolen by my brilliant lab assistant.”
“Does he still work in St. Petersburg?” Jake asked.
“He moved back to East Germany not long after we finished the work.”
Jake’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Was his name Engel?”
Kozlov shook his head. “His name is Walter Holtz. The last I heard of him he was running a big genetics firm in Germany and had become a millionaire.”
“Holtz,” Jake repeated, glancing over at Katie with half a smile.
“You obviously recognize the name,” the professor observed.
“I bumped into two of his employees at the museum the night that Baranov was murdered. They were after the film that Katie found in the Gobi.”
“I assume Tamara told you that part too,” Katie smiled.
Kozlov nodded.
“You said that Holtz was managing a genetics company,” Jake said. “Is that a carryover from his research? Was he doing genetics work in East Germany?”
“He actually owns the company I believe, and yes, he was well known in Soviet genetics circles. As a professor, Holtz published a large number of papers until he discovered commercial success. Then his work became proprietary and the publications stopped.”
“What sort of research was he doing?” Katie asked.
“Aging,” a glint of humor entered Kozlov’s eyes, “or rather, how to prevent it. Walter was obsessed with the concept, even when he was a student here in Russia. Leslie Orgel had just published his theories on transcription errors the year before Walter came to work at the lab. He was fascinated by Orgel’s hypotheses.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me again, Professor,” Jake said.
“Orgel’s Catastrophic Theory on Aging and Longevity,” Kozlov replied. “It’s the belief that errors in transcription—that is the passing on of the genetic code to daughter cells—leads to errors in the cloned DNA molecules. When enough of these errors occur, the process spirals out of control and the organism dies.”
“Is that what happens in aging?” Jake asked.
The professor shrugged. “No one knows for certain. It is one of the enduring mysteries of science. Walter even abandoned Orgel’s work, taking up instead the DNA Damage Theory. His last publications proclaimed this idea.”
Jake raised his eyebrows.
“Changes, or damages, in our DNA increase as we get older,” Kozlov explained. “That’s well documented in both mice and human studies. What is not known is whether these changes are the cause of aging or whether they are caused by aging. With marginal research to back his claims, Holtz strongly believed it was the cause. He wrote that as mankind evolved into higher beings, we also declined in terms of lifespan. Mutations and other outside forces accumulate over the years. This inflicts more damage on our DNA, and man lives fewer years because of it.”
“And he thought this process could be reversed?” Katie spoke.
“In theory,” the professor answered, “if the DNA damage idea is correct, you should be able to delay aging by increasing the effectiveness of DNA repair mechanisms. I suspect that is what Holtz’s company is researching. My East German wunderkind is not so young anymore, and he would prefer to live forever. Others will pay handsomely for the same privilege.”
After thanking the professor and saying their goodbyes, Jake and Katie walked back to the parking lot. On the street to their right, they saw the unnerving flash of police lights. This time, however, it appeared that the officers were responding to an accident. They could see an ambulance and a tow truck. To avoid getting caught up in the traffic, Jake drove out a different entrance and doubled back at the next block over.
Because of their alternate route, what they couldn’t see was that a dark sedan had been struck in the side by a taxi. The driver of the sedan had been killed in the collision, but the taxi driver was nowhere to be found. The thing which puzzled the police was that the taxi was not local. It belonged to a company that operated solely out of St. Petersburg.
37
Early the next morning, Jake showered and grabbed a breakfast bar before heading back to the embassy to meet with his boss. He had phoned Bill after their meeting with Katie’s professor to see what information he had been able to gather about Walter Holtz. Not willing to discuss the subject over an unsecured line, Bill had asked him to come in.
It was their last day in Russia. While Jake ventured out for a final meeting at the embassy, Katie and her grandmother remained at the safe house, mostly to stay out of sight. After Jake and Katie had gone to meet Kozlov the night before, Baba had phoned Stefan and the two had enjoyed a long conversation. If there had been any hard feelings, they were now laid to rest. Once things had settled down, Baba had agreed to meet him for dinner.
When Jake reached Bill’s temporary office, he found his boss engrossed in the contents of a thick file folder which was spilled across the conference room table.
“I’ve got a line on your boy,” Bill greeted him.
Jake walked in and shut the door.
“Have a seat,” Bill motioned before joining him at the table. “An interesting character. You were right on target with the genetics connections. Holtz Industries is a large conglomerate with holdings that range from steel to cosmetics. He spends most of his time in New York City, is a patron of the arts, and a major financial contributor to the Natural History Museum.”
“Has he become a U.S. citizen?”
“No, still German.”
“Just like Enge
l.”
Bill shook his head. “If you’re trying to find a connection, I’m not sure there is one. Holtz is a legitimate businessman with no real ties to East Germany or Eastern Europe for that matter. He came to the U.S. after the reunification of Germany and has run all of his businesses clearly within the law.”
“But he was East German,” Jake contended.
“An underpaid professor in Berlin. After East and West Berlin merged, he sold his research to several investors in Europe and the U.S., and the rest is history. With this small fortune, he has amassed a much larger one.”
“What did you find out about his genetics company?”
“It’s Forschung Genetik, or its acronyn FORGEN. Translated, it means Research Genetics. It’s the second largest company of its kind in Europe based on annual revenue. If you include the financial assets of its non-profit side of the business, it’s one of the largest genetics research companies in the world.”
“What kind of work do they do?”
“You’ll find this interesting,” Bill removed a sales flyer from the table and handed it to Jake. “This is from one of their subsidiaries, a quasi-pharmaceutical company called Ewig. I spoke with a friend of mine who’s spent most of his career in Germany and asked him if he had ever heard of the company. Interestingly enough, last year they faced a class action lawsuit for a longevity product that produced some serious side-effects including death.”
“Longevity,” Jake nodded. “Life extending, fountain of youth sort of thing. That’s not surprising. Has the lawsuit been settled?”
“Out of court for an undisclosed sum. The German equivalent of the FDA forced it off the market. But it’s resurfaced as an even more profitable product on the black market, especially in Asia and South America.”
“Longevity,” Jake said thoughtfully. There had to be some connection between Holtz’s research and the animal tissue that Dmitri Petrovich discovered. He and Katie had discussed it at length upon returning from their meeting with the professor. However, she could find no logical connection.
The Genesis Conspiracy Page 19