I can extract side effects

"Mr. Wei, why are you here?"

Xue Shen saw Wei Kang's figure appearing at the door from a distance, and immediately ran over with a humble smile on his face.

"I saw the report. It is said that your nanolab has already made samples of artificial blood vessels, so I came here to take a look out of curiosity."

Wei Kang said casually, looking around, looking at the situation of the laboratory.

The previously empty laboratory was now full of people, and file cabinets were placed in every corner.

All the equipment and materials are neatly arranged, and the personnel are in their positions in an orderly manner, presenting a tense and busy working atmosphere, which is different from the chaos and order in the equipment business department and the vitality of the biological laboratory. very different.

He nodded secretly in his heart, and couldn't help agreeing with Xue Shen's management ability.

Under the leadership of different people, each major laboratory will have its own unique style. This style cannot be copied and is difficult to imitate, but it will subtly affect every employee from the inside out.

As the boss, he is also an outsider. He can only wait and see with cold eyes and cannot intervene. Even if the performance is affected, at most he will change the director.

So far, though, this management style has been quite useful, leading to an explosion of research results, which he is happy to see.

As soon as Xue Shen saw the big boss coming to inspect, his desire to show off immediately rushed to his heart, and he immediately slapped his thigh and said:

"It's such a coincidence that the sample was made two days ago, and I'm about to report it to you."

"Mr. Wei, this way please, let me show you well."

Wei Kang changed into a lab coat, hat, mask, and gloves, and covered his whole body tightly before entering the laboratory.

As soon as I entered the door, I saw several staff members gathered in front of a large experimental platform, busy non-stop.

He walked over and saw a crude machine on the experimental bench, which could be seen to be self-assembled, consisting of several stainless steel shelves, filled with 500ml glass bottles, which were processed through different pipelines. connect.

At the far right is a sealed device with four drawers combined, densely packed with plastic tubes of different colors, which looks a bit messy.

"I declare that the evaluation of orderliness and orderliness will be withdrawn." Wei Kang felt dazzled when he glanced over, and couldn't help complaining silently in his heart.

Xue Shen followed closely behind, came to the machine, and couldn't wait to introduce it.

"Mr. Wei, this is a desktop automatic protein synthesis machine that we assembled ourselves. It can connect the amino acids that make up a protein in series within a few hours according to a predetermined procedure, greatly reducing the time required for protein synthesis."

"In this way, artificial proteins can be designed and manufactured on-demand by adding different amino acids."

"It's just that it is still relatively rough at present. It can only synthesize protein molecules with less than 300 amino acids, and cannot directly synthesize larger protein macromolecules."

Wei Kang was immediately awed, but at the same time a little surprised, this is a bit big.

Although protein synthesis technology is nothing new, but instead of using the most common genetic recombination technology, they assembled a machine by themselves, which is enough to prove the strength of the project team.

"It may be that gene recombination technology is difficult for the synthesis of elastin molecules, so this method was adopted." He thought to himself.

Immediately afterwards, he took a closer look at the rumbling and low-pitched machine, but couldn't see anything, so he nodded his head in appreciation.

"Very powerful, is the elastin molecule synthesized here?"

Xue Shen nodded, proudly said: "That's right, elastin molecules are synthesized by this machine."

"As we all know, elastin is the main component of elastic fibers. Elastic fibers are rubber-like elastic fibers that can be stretched several times and return to their original shape, so they have the reputation of 'human rubber'."

"Elastin is abundant in tissues and is found in the lungs, aorta, certain ligaments, skin and ear cartilage."

"However, the elastin molecules commonly found in living organisms are relatively large, with about 700 amino acids, which cannot be synthesized by this machine for the time being."

"The elastin molecules we use are different from those in nature. The molecular weight is relatively small, only 218. The folded structure is also special, showing a concentric ring shape, and there is a unique interface design between each other. In this way, It can be synthesized using a machine."

"Through chemical reactions, we can also cross-link each other and assemble them into nano-networks. At the same time, we add some cofactors to help elastin fold, such as detergents or liposomes, so that The accessory peptides on the surface form a smooth film."

"Papa papa!" Wei Kang couldn't help applauding: "It's really amazing. Please explain this magical machine to me in detail."

"Okay." Xue Shen stepped forward, pointing at different parts of the machine, and began to explain in eloquence.

"The machine uses a solid-phase peptide synthesis technique that simply needs to add chemicals containing the corresponding amino acids to synthesize the desired protein."

"At each step of the synthesis, the chemicals are cycled through a heated reaction cycle containing a resin bed, optimized to form each peptide bond in just 1 minute, up to 86 amino acids of the insulin precursor, in an hour and a half It can be assembled."

"Our detailed analysis of the synthetic insulin shows that it functions and structures exactly like natural human insulin."

"In order to improve the success rate and find the optimal formulation for each reaction, we performed amino acid-specific coupling reactions under many different conditions and finally assembled a general procedure."

"The average efficiency of each reaction exceeds 99.99%. Even when assembling protein macromolecules with hundreds of amino acids, the difference rate can be reduced to less than 0.01%, which greatly improves the success rate of synthesis."

"Currently, this machine is still an experimental machine, and each reaction process needs to be manually operated by the experimenters, so they have to keep an eye on it all the time, so that no mistakes can be made."

"Of course, we're continuing to optimize the machine to automate the entire manufacturing process so that after the protein is synthesized, the cleavage, purification and folding steps follow without any human intervention."

"After the optimization is completed, any experimenter can operate it. Just walk over and input a string of protein sequences on the machine, and it can string these amino acids together. When the reaction is over, you can get the protein you want. any protein."

"Wow!" After listening to it, Wei Kang felt a sense of ignorance for an instant, and he asked curiously, "This seems to be completely different from the commonly used genetic engineering technology. Is there any difference?"

"Of course it's not the same. This is a completely new technological improvement."

"You should know that most of the proteins that exist in the human body are 400 amino acids long, and there are only 20 of them."

Seeing Wei Kang nodding slowly, Xue Shen couldn't help getting excited, and his tone became more and more high-pitched.

"In fact, the polypeptide chain of these 20 amino acids may be the most versatile material on Earth.

"As a nanotechnology scientist, our most fundamental goal is to be able to use the diversity of protein polypeptide chains to build arbitrary three-dimensional shapes."

When Xue Shen said this, his face was filled with a confident look overlooking the world, but he immediately restrained himself and regained his humility.

He said with a dry laugh: "Of course, we are still a little far away from this goal, and we are moving in this direction."

"Come back to business, protein synthesis currently uses recombinant gene technology, where DNA molecules containing custom protein codes are implanted into microorganisms such as Escherichia coli or yeast to produce a large amount of this protein."

"Insulin, as well as other biological enzymes, are made using this technology."

"However, this traditional gene technology also has some shortcomings. The proteins that microorganisms can build are relatively limited, and they can only produce small molecular polypeptides, which is powerless for artificial proteins that do not exist in nature."

"It's not even possible to do that with large proteins, which can form unexpected folds and structures when they're built."

"Therefore, synthesizing proteins through chemical reactions is a better technology. Not only can macromolecular proteins be synthesized, but also artificial amino acids that are not found in nature can be added to construct brand new artificial proteins."

"The shape of a protein is mainly determined by its amino acid sequence and environmental factors. Under the correct temperature, pH and salt concentration, the amino acid sequence will spontaneously fold into a functional three-dimensional protein structure."

"If someone is smart enough, they can artificially synthesize proteins from the sequence of amino acids."

"Of course, the process of artificial protein synthesis is difficult because the protein folds into a series of transitional states in a chemical reaction. In real life, this folding occurs within milliseconds, or even microseconds if the protein is small enough. "

"So we still have a long way to go. The elastin molecule is also relatively easy because of its special structure and can be cross-linked. If it is a real protein macromolecule of 700 amino acids, we are currently realizing it. There are still bigger difficulties.”

Wei Kang waved his hand in a happy mood, and said, "It's okay, you have to eat every bite, and you have to walk step by step on the road. I am deeply proud of what you have achieved now."

"After hearing so much from you, I am looking forward to artificial blood vessels even more."

"Then," he rubbed his hands impatiently, and said, "Let me see the real biological artificial blood vessel."

"This is it." Xue Shen suppressed the excitement in his heart, carefully took out a glass dish, and displayed it in front of Wei Kang like a treasure.

Wei Kang opened his eyes and looked over, and saw a 5 cm long fiber bundle lying in the transparent container, slender and smooth, slightly transparent, showing a yellowish luster, looking like a rubber band.

He chuckled and said, "It looks a little ordinary on the outside, what caliber is it?"

Xue Shen quickly explained: "This is a 4mm small-diameter artificial blood vessel with a very high technical content. It is mainly used in heart bypass surgery for coronary heart disease. Because the diameter of the coronary artery is very small, between 2-7mm, it is very easy to block. The artificial blood vessels used must be under 6mm."

"We are doing performance tests this week. It performs very well in all aspects. The data is out of the table. It is simply a piece of cake."

"This blood vessel looks very thin, but it is very elastic, has a super anticoagulant effect, and its structure is very tight, and it will not bleed. Compared with it, it is much better than imported polyester artificial blood vessels."

"Actually, it's not that we can't make it thinner, but no matter how delicate the surgical bypass operation is, there is a maximum value, right? The doctors wear a magnifying glass, not a microscope, and the thinnest operation is on blood vessels of three to four millimeters. This size It's enough."

While talking, he took out the tweezers, clamped the artificial blood vessel in the glass dish, and pulled it lengthwise.

The artificial blood vessel was visibly elongated by the naked eye, and it didn't stop until it was more than ten centimeters long.

Immediately afterwards, the artificial blood vessel was pulled to both sides to make it thicker, until it was close to the limit of 2 cm thick, and then let go.

In this way, after repeated pulling, the artificial blood vessel did not deform or damage in the slightest.

Finally, Xue Shen directly pinched the blood vessel with his gloved hand, and handed it to Wei Kang.

Wei Kang took the artificial blood vessel, put it in his palm, and slowly felt it.

Through plastic gloves, feel this unique feel.

The blood vessel is hollow as a whole, but the wall of the vessel is not thick, making it appear that there is a large space inside.

With a light touch, it feels like touching a girl's skin, smooth, soft, and elastic.

When kneaded, it is very tough like cooked beef tendon.

In short, it feels very special.

He rubbed it in the palm of his hand, and it was easily squeezed into a soybean-sized ball, but as soon as he let go, the artificial blood vessel quickly returned to its original shape.

"It feels good in the hand, and it's good to pinch." Wei Kang nodded and put it back in the glass dish.

"When can animal experiments begin?"

Xue Shen pondered: "Next week at the earliest. The plan is two rounds of animal experiments, the first round will be on mice, and the second round will be on pigs."

"The mouse experiment is relatively simple, just cut off a small blood vessel, replace it with an artificial blood vessel and suture it, and it will be fine on the limbs."

"If pigs are used as experimental subjects, they should be divided into two experimental groups. One group uses our new artificial blood vessels, and the other uses ordinary imported polyester artificial blood vessels for aortic replacement surgery."

"By observing the indicators of two different artificial blood vessels during the operation period and three months after operation, and conducting pathological, imaging, and statistical analyzes to evaluate the actual performance of the artificial blood vessels."

"We have to go to a third-party medical research institution for the pig experiment, because the laboratory does not have doctors and related equipment, so it has to be carried out by professionals."

"If the animal experiments go well, you can apply for human clinical trials."

"Very good." Wei Kang gave a thumbs up and said approvingly, "I'm looking forward to your experiment report."

Seeing the boss leave contentedly, Xue Shen burst into joy.

This effort was not in vain, and he finally showed his face in front of the boss. Presumably this protein synthesis machine will impress him deeply.

Next, success or failure depends on the performance of artificial blood vessels in animals.