Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 1030: The Fall of Fantasy (Part )

"I was hoping to talk about this later."

Facing this situation, Li Li spoke calmly. She immediately put the coffee cup on the ground, walked quickly to the sink, and washed the burned part of her hand with cold water.

Zhou Yu followed her and asked, "What's going on?"

"It's a disease with an unknown transmission method." Li Li said without looking up, "It will first cause the patient to gradually lose the sense of cold and heat, and then expand to the entire pain sense, causing some kind of mutation in the nerves... I don't know the subsequent symptoms yet. I'm far from that stage."

Zhou Yu listened to her words, but Zhang Mumu's appearance appeared in his mind. He said anxiously: "This is not a disease. There was a girl who jumped off a building and died..."

"Almost all of the women who died had this condition at some time in their lives, if that's what you want to say."

Li Li turned off the faucet, turned his head and looked at him and said: "Although this phenomenon is as confusing as witchcraft, it is still a strange disease. In all the body tissues of the dead that I can collect, I can find exactly the same abnormal protein structure and neurological changes. And my own infection allows me to observe the evolution of this disease from the early stage."

Zhou Yu frowned. Even though Li Li claimed that he was a doctor, these statements still sounded strange to him.

"Our body sense is a very complex system, Mr. Zhou Yu. When we touch the surface of a table, we actually get a series of information such as temperature, hardness, smoothness, and our own contact part at the same time. These tasks are completed by independent receptors. For example, we usually think that the main receptor for heat sensation is the protein TRPV1. When the ambient temperature exceeds 42 degrees, it releases an electrical signal to the nerves, causing the brain to feel pain. This is the principle why we feel 'hot'."

She raised her burned hand, clenched it slowly twice, and then said, "Congenital analgesia in medicine is generally believed to be caused by abnormal structure of protein NAV.17 or NAV.19, which cannot generate and transmit electrical signals normally. The root of this abnormality comes from the mutation of its controlling gene. In other words, this is a congenital recessive genetic disease, and the patient has no pain perception since birth. Unfortunately, our existing gene editing technology makes it difficult to modify the formed human body. Once a baby with painlessness is born from the mother's womb, he will be accompanied by the threat of painlessness for life. Interestingly, before entering here, I was completely healthy at the genetic level and did not show any mutations that were different from ordinary people. And until now, I have not been able to find any problems from genetic testing. Mr. Zhou Yu, it's like overnight, the protein cold and hot receptors in my body stopped working. Their structure has not been deformed, but when the environment reaches the critical temperature where they should be activated, they are frozen and unresponsive. I have an even more unpleasant guess, Mr. Zhou Yu, I think these protein structures are looking forward to my death."

After listening to her description, Zhou Yu didn't know what to say. In the end, he could only shake his head slowly: "Protein has no consciousness."

"This is a topic closer to philosophy, Mr. Zhou Yu," Li Li said. "What criteria do we use to judge individual life? Generally speaking, when a person loses a hand, he will never regard the severed hand as 'himself'. Even if we use some medical means to maintain the activity of the palm, obviously in concept we still regard the severed part of the palm as a person. However, if a person loses most of his body and only survives with his brain in a tank, we think that the lonely organ is the 'alive' part."

Zhou Yu was still digesting the fact that Li Li was ill, so he had no mood to talk about such unrealistic topics. He blurted out anxiously: "The brain is the center of human thinking and the most important organ in the whole body. As long as the brain is alive, other parts are just replaceable parts. Is it strange to use it as a reference for survival?" Li Li just folded his hands contentedly.

"I am very happy to hear your opinion, Mr. Zhou Yu. However, I must point out that the organ in our body that makes the judgment that 'the brain is the most important' is not fair in its position. It is a arbitrator who votes for itself."

Zhou Yu smiled inexplicably: "Isn't the brain ourselves?"

"That's a good question, but which part? The nucleus? The limbus? The cortex? The brain is just a chemical reaction organ assembled from many parts. Apart from the complexity of its structure, it is no different from other parts of our body. It is only because it is an integration center for data that we treat it differently. We tend to believe that we are a whole, a minimum unit of life that cannot be divided. But in fact, even a single cell has the basic characteristics of life. We are much larger than a basic unit."

"I don't understand why you're saying this." Zhou Yu finally got to the point. "If your illness is caused by the protein receptor, then it has nothing to do with brain tissue. This kind of genetic disease involving the gene level cannot be cured at this stage. You should be prepared to prevent..."

Li Li shook his head. Zhou Yu had felt that she looked bad when they first met, and now, whether it was because of the pale and bright light or the psychological effect after he knew about her illness, Li Li's face was so pale that he looked like he was about to die.

"This is the key to everything, Mr. Zhou Yu."

She spoke softly with a certain sadness in her voice: "What if our individual consciousness is an illusion? We are just a mobile factory composed of a large group of cellular organisms. Usually they coexist and die together, and cooperate to survive. However, in rare cases, they fight each other and even try to kill other alien species. Until finally, the victorious species - maybe just a certain type of digestive enzyme, or a protein - takes over the original position in the brain. It no longer needs extra data exchange, just instill a few simple principles of action... I know this must sound like nonsense, but this is the most effective way at present. A conclusion that makes sense. When I found out I had this cold and heat insensitivity, I spent a long time studying the underlying mechanism. To this end, I used all the resources at hand. I founded Lunxing to collect equipment and searched the entire city for suitable researchers. These things made me exhausted. Even so, the progress of the research was always delayed again and again. I can't say exactly what happened, but the result is that the employees in charge of the laboratory always resigned the fastest, and those who didn't leave were always as depressed as if they were ill, and finally I had to close the laboratory. Before that, I got some data feedback from the laboratory. "

Li Li was lost in thought for a while, as if thinking about how to tell Zhou Yu what he had discovered.

"The report from the laboratory shows that the protein TRPV1 obtained from my body, as well as a series of other proteins related to the sense of cold and heat, all have 'strange anti-experimental properties'. When people try to observe their state, they behave like ordinary protein structures, but as long as the whole process is not under surveillance, they become motionless diseased proteins. There are many other unexplainable situations like this, and only the members of this laboratory can fully understand them. In short, the proteins taken out of my body show some kind of volitional behavior. They have learned to lie and disguise themselves in order to avoid research on themselves. The person who came to this conclusion was the third head of the laboratory, and he is probably still spending his days in a mental hospital now."

(End of this chapter)