The rise of nanometers

The pace of time never stops.

Brian and others traveled to the Tiangong Space Station for a week, during which they visited the Space Farm Laboratory, the Space Observatory, etc.

As tourists continue to edit their space station travel experiences into blog posts and publish them on Time Blog, the popularity of space tourism has also increased a lot.

Although space is still a realm outside of life for ordinary people, this situation is changing little by little.

the other side.

Australia, deep in the Victoria Desert.

The base that had been studying the Yinghuo fungus welcomed a special guest.

Huang Xiuyuan's stand-in robot stood outside the laboratory, staring inside through the glass window.

Next to him was Li Mingyu, a senior researcher of the research team. He said excitedly: "Academician Huang, we have found the key gene fragment of the fluorescent fungus. Look..."

Li Mingyu called up what they found on the computer, which contained 36,000 confirmed gene fragments of the Yinghuo fungus.

Of course, this does not mean that the fluorescent fungus only has 36,000 gene fragments, but its number of gene fragments is probably around 36,000.

Each gene segment has various types, especially the 23,000 gene segments that are prone to high-speed mutation, representing the infinite possibilities of fluorescent fungi.

But every organism that can be called a species has one thing in common, that is, they have a basic genetic disk, that is, the existence of relatively stable gene segments.

This is just like humans, even if there is a genetic mutation, they will not suddenly mutate into fish, birds or insects.

Every species has a genetic foundation that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years. If this genetic foundation is lost, the species will most likely die of genetic collapse during the mutation process.

Biological genes are divided into "unstable genes" and "stable genes". Normally, among the gene sequences of multicellular organisms, stable genes account for the vast majority and unstable genes account for a small part.

Microorganisms, on the contrary to multicellular organisms, have a relatively high proportion of unstable genes, which is why microorganisms can easily mutate.

Fluorescent fungi are not out of this category. The number of unstable genes is about 23,000; while the number of stable genes is about 13,000.

The proportion of unstable genes in the fluorescent fungus is as high as 60%. Its mutation probability and mutation speed are more powerful than the ordinary microorganisms in Blue Star.

This is also the foundation for the survival of fluorescent fungi. They can travel across the universe, from Mars, under the impact of asteroids, following meteorite fragments, floating in the sub-vacuum universe. Without this super mutation characteristic, they would have been in the cold for a long time. .

But it is also this characteristic that makes fluorescent fungi difficult to control.

Previously, more than a dozen related research institutes in the Federation were studying fluorescent fungi, but apart from obtaining some derivative results, other results were very few.

It’s not that the researchers are doing nothing, but that the fluorescent fungus is indeed too difficult to deal with.

After a series of failures, Li Mingyu's team finally completed the genetic sequence determination of the fluorescent fungus. This so-called determination provided a preliminary understanding of the function behind the gene.

Of course, there is still a lot of uncertainty in this determination.

The most difficult part of the genes to measure is the 23,000 unstable genes, which are too easy to mutate.

Changes in the external environment may lead to mutations in these genes.

Li Mingyu's team also worked hard to preliminarily determine this part of the unstable genes.

The determination of unstable genes cannot determine the specific gene function. It can only make a preliminary determination of the gene's general type, functional scope, and possible mutation direction.

Even such vague measurements kept more than 170 researchers in Li Mingyu's team busy for two and a half years.

Huang Xiuyuan looked at the general genetic map, and he quickly understood the core direction of Li Mingyu's team.

From the genetic blueprint of fluorescent fungi, it can be seen that Li Mingyu's team has placed the stable genes of fluorescent fungi as the core direction of research.

Rather than digging into the unstable genes, they focused on the stable genes.

After determining the gene sequence of stable genes, the variation limit range of some unstable genes was locked through the correlation between genes.

Huang Xiuyuan is very optimistic about the ideas of Li Mingyu's team. Instead of focusing on unstable genes, it is better to achieve the possibility of bypassing them through stable genes.

Apparently they succeeded.

After all, the genetic sequence of organisms is rarely an isolated system. The genetic sequences of organisms are often chains that interact and combine with each other.

This is the concept of gene chains, where gene segments are interlocking with each other.

In fact, this is also a battle of ideas.

Some geneticists believe that a single gene represents a specific function; others believe that in addition to its own expression function, a single gene can also form a systemic function together with other genes.

Obviously, as Orientals, Li Mingyu's team agrees with the latter concept.

That is, the gene itself has a specific function, and is combined with other genes to form an overall system function. In addition, this overall system function is most likely not one layer, but a combination of multiple layers.

For example: gene A, gene B, gene C, the three genes themselves have three specific functions. This gene function is called "single gene function";

And A+B forms an overall system function, which is called "primary system function";

If it is A+B or B+C, the two primary system functions are combined again, and they may form a higher-level system function.

This continuous superposition of genes is the essence of the complex life state of organisms.

The essence of the universe is a matryoshka doll.

The essence of genes is also like a matryoshka doll.

In fact, this is determined by the basic law of the universe.

Huang Xiuyuan has been opposed to the large-scale promotion of "genetically modified crops" before, and he has concerns in this regard. Humanity's understanding of biological genes is still in a relatively poor state.

Many geneticists have a kind of blind arrogance, and of course there is capital behind this, which has led to the rapid planting of genetically modified crops around the world.

But the risks involved are very huge. Biological genes are an organic whole. According to the Western scientific community's thinking, treat a headache and treat a sore foot.

That is, crops are not drought-tolerant, so the so-called "drought-tolerant gene fragment" is cut out from the genes of drought-tolerant organisms and replaced with this fragment.

It's just that this behavior ignores the integrity of biological genes.

Not only may it cause terrible genetic pollution to the crop species itself, but it may also expand this genetic pollution to the entire natural ecosystem.

Maybe for the ecosystem.

He probably wouldn't care.

But for the humans living in it, this is definitely a catastrophic consequence. Don't think that humans are so amazing. Human beings are actually very fragile.

Whether it's glowing fungi from Mars, periodic ice ages, sudden eruptions of the Yellowstone volcano, or super asteroids hitting blue stars.

For Blue Star itself, he actually doesn't care about these things.

There is a saying that goes like this.

If humans detonate all nuclear bombs, they will ultimately destroy humans themselves. Blue Star may even have its plates intact, and the ecosystem that has lost humans will return to normal within a few hundred years.

Arrogance is the biggest obstacle to survival.

Thank you for your support (ω｀). This book may be finished by the end of the month!