Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Professor Martin greeted them at the door to his lab, his expression forlorn.
“I still can’t believe it.” His voice shook, and he pressed a hand to his chest. “Everyone here is in complete and utter shock.” He swallowed. “Come on through, gentlemen.” The professor stumbled a little as he walked through the lab toward his office, and Dan watched him in alarm.
They stepped into the small room, and Dan caught a whiff of freshly brewed tea.
“You’re just in time. Might I offer you a cup of tea?”
Dan flashed Gary a look before replying. “Thanks, but we’re fine.”
They sat on the two wooden chairs that faced the professor’s desk. Professor Martin sank into his own chair, a dazed look in his eyes.
This has hit him really hard.
Dan took the lead. “We’re here because, like we said on the phone, you might have information that could provide clues as to what happened to Dr. Phillips.”
The professor nodded. “Then by all means, ask your questions. I want to help in any way I can.”
Dan settled into his seat and waited while Gary fished his notebook from his jacket pocket. He wasn’t sure what benefit he could be to the interview, but Gary had insisted.
I want to hear your insights, he’d said.
Dan opened himself up to whatever might come his way.
“I think you said you and Dr. Phillips had been working together for ten years,” Gary began.
The professor gave another hard swallow. “There’s nothing like the use of a past tense to really bring it home to you that you’ve lost someone.” He drank from his cup. “Yes, but we first met in 2002 in Cambridge in the UK. We were both visiting the Sangar Institute—the Human Genome Project.”
Gary chuckled. “And I’m lost already.”
Professor Martin smiled. “Then I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.” He paused. “How familiar are you with DNA?”
“I know I have it. Does that count?”
He laughed. “Well, it’s a start. DNA is an extremely long chain of molecules that contains all the information necessary for the life functions of a cell.”
“I think this is some new definition of painless that I haven’t previously encountered,” Dan quipped.
Getting the professor on familiar ground was one way of combating his grief.
Okay, so it would only distract him from it for a short while, but that had to be better than what he’d probably gone through since he heard the news of Dr. Phillips’s death.
Professor Martin smiled. “Science isn’t one of your strong points, I think is what you’re saying.”
“But I’ll persevere. So… molecules. At least that’s a word I recognize.”
“The individual molecules that make up DNA are called nucleotides. There are only four nucleotides that are ever used. These are Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine, but we usually refer to them by their first letters—A, T, G, and C.” He peered at them.
“Still with me? You haven’t fallen asleep yet? ”
“Still with you,” Gary assured him.
“Now, do you understand what I mean by human genome?”
Gary gave him a blank stare.
“Okay then, do you know what a chromosome is?”
“That’s a DNA molecule, isn’t it?” Dan offered. “Humans have X and Y chromosomes.”
Professor Martin smiled again. “There, you see? Not as weak in science as you told me.” He gave a nod.
“It contains part or all of the genetic material of an organism. Humans typically have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.” He paused.
“You’re not snoring. I’ll take that as a good sign.
Well, the human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within those twenty-three pairs in cell nuclei, and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria.
” He held up his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you a lecture on mitochondria.
All you need to know is that the human genome has about three billion building blocks of information arranged in a sequence of twenty-three chromosomes per copy.
” He sipped his tea. “If you were to print out the whole genome, with all those letters—ATGC—it would fill over one hundred hefty volumes.”
“So the Human Genome Project was studying DNA?” Dan inquired.
The professor nodded. “The Human Genome Project is one of the most amazing scientific accomplishments in history. A veritable voyage of biological discovery, led by an international group of researchers who came together to study all of the DNA of a select set of organisms. When it completed in 2003, it had generated the first sequence of the human genome, providing fundamental information about the human blueprint. And that accomplishment has accelerated the study of human biology, paving the way to improve the practice of medicine.”
Dan wasn’t sure he fully understood, but he could fake it until he got to a laptop and researched DNA.
“And that’s where you met Dr. Phillips, when you were both visiting the Project in 2002,” Gary reiterated.
He nodded. “She wasn’t even thirty, and yet she’d already accomplished so much.
” He paused. “Do you know what is the most important chemical reaction in life? It’s the stitching together of the building blocks that make up DNA.
And they’re stitched together in a particular order—a sequence.
It took the Project a decade to sequence the human genome.
” He smiled. “What we realized was it would be possible to accomplish that mighty task in a matter of days.”
Cambridge, UK, April, 2002
“Say that again.” Samantha Phillips gazed at him with an expression of keen interest. But it was the undercurrent of excitement in her voice that betrayed her emotions.
Around them, the coffee shop was full of noise and smells, but he dialed them out.
It had taken him seconds to recognize he and Dr. Phillips thought alike.
“I said, what if it were possible to color-code all four bases differently?”
“But how?”
He smiled. “Fluorophores.”
Her eyes widened. “Of course. We chemically label each of the bases with a fluorescent probe, and when we shine a light on it at a specific wavelength, it emits light back at a different wavelength, so we can detect them on a spectrometer.”
“Exactly.” Damn, she had a quick mind.
She stilled. “That would make sequencing so much faster. We could sequence trillions of bases.”
He laughed. “Trillions?”
“How far have you got with this?”
“I’ve only just started. Don’t forget, I have a day job. The CDC can be a very demanding workplace.” He tilted his head. “You think we could do this, don’t you?”
“I think we could be looking at a miracle. What if we could take your work, my work, then bring together the right engineers, chemists, molecular biologists, computational people, software designers, and integrate all their skills so we can make it possible to sequence the human genome in a day—on a single system.”
“Now wait a minute.” Her mind had made leaps he hadn’t even considered.
“I’m not saying we could accomplish this tomorrow. But it could be done. Couldn’t it?”
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
“Her excitement and enthusiasm were infectious.” Professor Martin drank more of his tea. “We knew neither of us could begin work immediately on what would be an enormous undertaking, so we agreed to stay in touch, and that when the moment was right….”
“But right to do what, exactly?” Gary was having a hard time keeping up.
“We had to carry out our experiments to stain the bases first. Imagine looking at the genome sequence and not seeing lines of letters, but colors, making it easier to read the sequence. And then we had to find investors and funding.”
“Investors for what?” Dan asked.
His eyes sparkled. “To create a technology for gene sequencing that would revolutionize medicine. A technology that was to have a far bigger impact than we’d anticipated.”
“This was the machine you mentioned yesterday,” Dan observed.
He nodded. “In essence, we created a company as a vehicle to mobilize capital and resources to build the team we would need to realize our vision: to build rapid gene-sequencing machines.”
Gary let out a low whistle. “Such a company would be worth… millions?”
The professor shook his head. “Billions, and provide jobs for thousands of people all over the world. Please, don’t misunderstand me.
We didn’t set out to make a lot of money.
Our original intention was to understand the DNA double helix in the greatest possible detail, to reveal how it worked, molecule by molecule.
But then we spotted an opportunity that would transform healthcare.
” He smiled. “Think about it. Personalized healthcare. Sequencing the genomes of cancer patients, cancers caused by changes to their DNA. By picking up those changes through sequencing, we can learn in great detail about the underlying traits of cancer. Rapid gene sequencing would also identify viruses and their variants. And then there’s the study of epigenetic information. ”
“Epigenetic? I haven’t heard that term before.” Gary wrote quickly.
“Epigenetics is the study of how cells control gene activity without changing the DNA sequence. In other words, modifications to DNA that regulate whether genes are turned off or on.” Professor Martin set his cup down.
“Gentlemen, our research has helped us gain more information from DNA. Not just an instruction manual to encode all the different proteins, but additional instructions that tell all those proteins how and when to do their job.”
The vocabulary might have been daunting, but there was no mistaking the excitement Gary could hear in the professor’s voice.
“Let’s take cancer as an example. By analyzing data from blood-based testing of DNA—by measuring epigenetic patterns in DNA in blood—we can detect cancer at an earlier stage.
Our ambition is to detect all diseases earlier, and that could potentially lead to their prevention or even cure them altogether.
We’re not there yet, however. We’re only just learning that DNA has many layers as to how it stores and transmits information in biological systems. What we’re searching for are ways to fully decode what DNA is telling us. ”
“So you began working on this in 2008?”
The professor nodded. “Harvard was more than happy to provide me with lab space and to give us time and resources to pursue our research. So I left the CDC and came here. I lecture in medicine—mostly chemistry. Samantha lectures—lectured—in genetics, and when we weren’t in front of our students, we were here. ”
“It sounds to me as if your work would bring enormous benefits for mankind,” Gary commented. “Which I have to admit confuses me. I can’t see why anyone would want her dead because of her work.”
Professor Martin froze. “But… you’re saying whoever it was in the other vehicle deliberately chased her off the road to kill her?”
“We’re looking into that theory,” Gary told him.
“But why kill her? To stop our work? I’m still here, aren’t I? Our work continues. Unless you think I was given a substance to produce a heart attack.” He shook his head. “No, gentlemen. I cannot believe her death was in any way related to her work. There must be another reason.”
Gary was inclined to think the same thing.
None of this makes sense.
He stood. “Thank you for your time, Professor. We appreciate it.”
“Giving up a fraction of my time seems the right thing to do if it helps you in your job.” He sagged into the chair.
“Should you be here?” Dan asked. “You’ve only been out of the hospital a few days, you said. Maybe you should be taking things easier.”
Gary had to admit the professor seemed tired.
“I think perhaps you’re right. I can’t afford to take time off, but maybe I could cut back on my hours. Allow myself a little time to recuperate.” He gazed at them. “But if there’s anything else I can do, please, get in touch. The university will let me know.”
They thanked him again and left him in the office.
“I guess it’s back to the drawing board,” Gary remarked as they walked along the hallway toward the stairs.
He paused at the top. “There was definitely a link between Samantha Phillips and Jonathon Wilmer. I think we can rule out a link with Eddie Ray. He was there to divert our attention away from Wilmer.”
“Then what about Leo? Don’t forget—he’s what got us here. That damn bullet. Could his death be connected to Samantha or Wilmer?” His eyes widened. “What if he was a student here? One of her students?”
“Let’s find out.” Gary hurried back to the professor’s laboratory. The door to his office stood open, and he stuck his head around it. “Professor Martin?”
The professor had his head in his hands. He raised his chin. “Did you forget something?”
“One last question. Did Dr. Phillips ever mention a student called Leo Deakins?”
He frowned. “I don’t think so. Is it important?”
“It might be. Thank you.” He walked quickly back to where Dan stood waiting.
“I’ve been thinking….”
Gary chuckled. “Now what?”
“There is another angle we can look at. I think we need to talk to Tyler Benedict again.”
“Leo’s roommate? Why?”
Dan smiled. “Because he was hiding something.”