Free Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life by Thomas T. Thomas

tiny strands of genetic material never left the cell nucleus. MicroRNAs promoted complementary sites along the chromosomal DNA to express other bits of microRNA, and those bits promoted still other bits in a precisely timed cascade of cellular development and differentiation inside the embryo. Eventually, one of those branching cascades would lead to expressing the combination of proteins that determined what kind of bodily tissue the cell was to become.
    By studying embryo development, researchers working in laboratories and teams around the world quickly identified the microRNAs sequences needed to tell a developing epithelial or skin cell to become part of a lung, liver, or kidney. Or a developing cell in the connective tissue to become blood, arteries, and veins. And they learned that the process could be worked in reverse. By tagging these little bits of RNA, synthesizing them in quantity, and then introducing them into an adult cell of the right type, along with other compounds that would induce or inhibit cell growth, they could reprogram an adult cell and return it to a semi-developed state which would keep its options open. That state was called “pluripotency,” and the cells reprogrammed from adult cells were called “induced pluripotent stem cells,” or iPSCs for short.
    And that was all they did in Gonzales’s laboratory at Stanford: take tissue samples from adult patients, treat them with specific sequences of microRNAs plus those other compounds according to various established protocols, and multiply the resulting iPSCs by the millions and billions. Then they would pack the reprogrammed cells on ice, perform a final DNA test to make sure that tissue-in matched tissue-out, and send them back to the originating center.
    In the case of the Wells_A cells, a mass of pluripotent nerve cells was all the patient really needed. The surgeons would then open up his or her—Gonzales checked the CODIS tag for sex determination and discovered Wells was a her —braincase or spine or wherever the damage had occurred, inject a dose of the cultured cells, and let them begin knitting the neural network back together. Those new cells would then begin the longer process of learning from their neighbors and copying or adapting to new brain functions.
    In the case of the Praxis_J cells, the frozen and type-matched package would be walked down the hall to Stanford Medical Center’s newly dedicated Multiple Tissue Structures Laboratory. Pluripotent muscle tissue, connective tissue reprogrammed as potential arteries and veins, and epithelial tissue reprogrammed as nerve cells would be combined in proportion on a collagen armature to become somebody’s new heart. Then the organ would be DNA-tested once again, packed on blue ice, and sent up to San Francisco, where the surgeons would cut open Praxis_J’s chest, remove his old, damaged heart, and insert a new one.
    Gonzales looked forward to the day when her lab could do more than just extract and expand stem cells, when the medical center could do more than simply build new hearts and other organs on the pattern of the old ones. For those tissues retained the genetic flaws, the inherent susceptibilities, which had caused problems in the first place. One day researchers would have complete access to the complex relationship between genes and proteins, and between proteins and tissue function. Then they could correct the genes while making new stem cells. They could give patients fixed hearts, free of defects and more resistant to disease.
    Tina Gonzales knew that she and the rest of the medical profession were standing on the brink of revolutionary change. Evolution would soon take place outside the human body, under the direction of research scientists would could predict and control the entire chemical makeup of life’s processes. They would draw on genes and proteins not just from the human cell line, but from the heritage of the world’s animals, plants, and bacteria as