Son of the Stars

Chapter 159 Decision

Lu Chen was not joking, nor did he mean to show off his good relationship with Mu Zhiran in front of Tang Qinglong. He truly and truly felt that his girlfriend was indeed the smartest person in the world.

A word that wakes up the dreamer and makes the bystanders confused by the authorities. It is Lu Chen who is troubled and has a headache. If you can’t use humans for in vivo experiments, wouldn’t it be better if you don’t use humans for experiments?

According to relevant regulations of the coalition government, cloned and gene-edited people cannot be regarded as ordinary people. They are "subhumans" who have human appearance and share the gene pool with humans.

The original intention of this decree was to restrict research progress on cloning and human genome editing. Cloning and human genome editing will have a serious, even devastating impact on the existing structure and operation of human society. By defining them as “sub-persons”, the coalition government directly cuts off the possibility of these two “persons” entering society.

They are not humans, they are man-made products that resemble humans in appearance. Therefore, they are naturally unable to possess and inherit any basic human rights. Coupled with other "human genetic resources control" and extremely expensive directional culture technology, almost no one is trying to clone humans anymore.

But this left a rare breakthrough for Lu Chen's experiment.

"If we don't have experimental materials, then we will prepare them ourselves." Lu Chen said to Tang Qinglong, who had a pooped expression on his face, "Teacher Tang, we can do the cloning ourselves!"

Clones are not considered human beings, and as long as there are no problems in the operation process, there will be almost no differences in the clones produced in large quantities - from a genetic level, they are the same individual.

"Clone humans and use them as experimental subjects?" Tang Qinglong was stunned for a moment, then he lowered his head and thought for a moment, "Let's not say whether this plan is feasible or not. Is there enough time?"

"If we use all directional training, it will take about six months per batch." Lu Chen said, "In six months, you can create a body that is roughly equivalent to a fifteen-year-old boy. Children of this age are already very close to adults. Completely. Waiting until adulthood to conduct experiments is somewhat unnecessary."

Tang Qinglong stared into Lu Chen's eyes and asked, "Can you do an experiment using a group of children who look fifteen years old but are actually newborns?"

That's a good question.

Lu Chen was a little embarrassed.

He tried to imagine that he was in the laboratory, wearing a white coat and black lambskin gloves. A gloomy and anti-human expression of a sinister smile switched back and forth between his eyebrows. Finally, Colonel Stan von Chenlu took off his gloves, held them in his hands and waved them hard, spitting and shouted in hard German: " The experiment begins!"

This scene made Lu Chen a little unable to hold himself tight. He could only raise his head and said to Tang Qinglong very honestly, "I don't know - this kind of thing has never happened even in my nightmares."

If he wanted to be smarter, the answer should be "I can't answer the hypothetical question." But Lu Chen felt that there was really no need to talk about these useless things in front of Tang Qinglong and Dr. Mu, "Maybe we can design and manufacture a few specially set robot……"

"There's no need to go to such trouble." Mu Zhiran interrupted Lu Chen, "Recruit a few agents that Watanabe can trust from the General Investigation Bureau. Anyway, it's just a job of sending people to a specific place and then leaving - no special training is required. .”

In just a few words, Lu Chen and Mu Zhiran had already determined the basic process of the experiment. And after thinking for a while, Tang Qinglong was surprised to find that there didn't seem to be any special problems with their experimental design.

"I don't think there's any big technical problem with doing this..." Tang Qinglong pointed at the table with his hand. "The main problem may still focus on the gene donor. Whose genes do you plan to use for cloning?"

Gene supply is also a troublesome issue, and the reason for the headache is moral ethics. According to the coalition government, human cloning is illegal. But it is certainly not enough to punish one party - it is also illegal to provide one's own genetic material knowing that cloning will be carried out.

"I have an idea about this," Lu Chen said. "Just use existing cell lines to combine them and then use them as maternal clones - cloning and gene editing at the same time. This can completely avoid the moral and ethical risks of cloning."

The most famous cell line in the medical field is the HeLa cell line, which is an extremely vigorous tumor cell line derived from the uterus of Henrietta Lacks. It replicates in less than 24 hours and shows no signs of stopping dividing.

Theoretically, it is impossible to clone an organism "similar" to Henrietta Lacks by directly using the HeLa cell line as a sample. Since no healthy cell samples from Henrietta Lacks have been preserved, we have no way of knowing how much of the existing HeLa cell line has "deviated" from her healthy genetic material.

But according to the genetic analysis of HeLa cells, its chromosome 5 has been completely broken into seven tissues of different sizes. The total number of chromosomes is between 77 and 80, nearly double the 46 in humans.

If cloned without any gene editing process, it is more likely that a large lump of human meat without skin and nervous system will be born in the directed catalytic machine. Using modern gene editing technology to analyze and compare multiple human cell lines, including HeLa cells, it is theoretically possible to directly create a human combination with 46 chromosomes. The chromosomes, which were completely pieced together by humans, were then injected into the enucleated human eggs through electrofusion technology.

Such eggs can eventually develop into embryos through the catalysis of stem cell directed induction and proliferation equipment - which can then be further processed.

If stability is required, this embryo can be used for the next step of replication. By thoroughly crushing the embryos to the cellular state, and then placing these somatic cells into the new stem cell directional induction proliferation equipment, a large number of highly consistent clone experimental bodies can be successfully produced - each time using electrofusion technology, with the help of Somatic cell cloning from human donated eggs is not safe.

The process of enucleating donated eggs is not stable enough, and there are too many things that can go wrong during the cloning process. The safest solution is to directly grind up the developing fetus and use these cells to clone it.

Of course, such new clones may face the risk of abnormal embryonic development or even cloning failure. After all, the Primarch itself is an embryo, and it is also a suture monster assembled artificially. But Lu Chen still deliberately avoided such an experimental plan.

Putting experimental subjects with no IQ and only basic reflexes and biological instincts into a silent and lightless cave to wait for death is the ultimate result that the entire human civilization has finally achieved under the pressure of Lu Chen's moral bottom line. Cutting a newborn baby into pieces to make clones... Lu Chen couldn't do it anyway.

Tang Qinglong sighed. After being silent for a long time, he sighed again, and then nodded, "I agree with your proposal."
-

"I agree with your proposal." Zheng Yan, the commander of Dawn 7, convened a plenary discussion with all members of Dawn 7 after much thought. At the discussion, the proposal to defy orders with Dawn 6 and continue the mission to Mars was unanimously approved.

Afterwards, Zheng Yan, who looked relieved, connected to the communication system with Dawn 6. She conveyed the unanimous decision of all members of Dawn 7 to Dawn 6 through completely unencrypted plaintext communication.

"Landing on Mars is our historical mission and task. Even if we can't go back, we will die on Mars." As the representative of the fighting nation in everyone's mouth, payload expert Valentina took the lead in expressing her position. "Although under the guidance of the coalition government, We no longer mention Russia in propaganda...but comrades, in the universe, we Russians are invincible!"

"Hey, what's the use of being invincible?" Jin Yuzhe rolled his eyes, "We are all grasshoppers on the same rope. What's the use of only one grasshopper being invincible? Only when we are in the same boat can we be invincible together. Invincible!"

Stephen and Jin Yuzhe looked at each other, he stretched and muttered, "Give me a cold beer, and I will be invincible now!"

"Okay, the joking ends here." Zheng Yan completed the communication with Shuguang 6, and then issued a new training order to her crew, "Starting today, all load training will return to normal. You also You don’t want to turn into a slug as soon as you land on Mars and have to lie on the ground and hunch around, right? Then train hard for me - the more developed your muscles are, the shorter the time to prepare for work after landing!"

She raised her eyebrows at her crew members and asked with a smile, "When you are seventy and eighty years old and go home with your grandson in your arms, if someone asks you, 'Grandpa, what have you been doing since landing on Mars?', you will have the nerve to answer People say, 'I've been lying on the bed to adjust to gravity'?"

"Hey, I'm not afraid!" Jin Yuzhe yelled at the top of his voice, "We Koreans don't have children!"

Valentina rolled her eyes, "I'll kick his ass first."

Stephen spread his hands and said, "I might raise a dog, and if possible, two thousand cows."

Nakamura Takuya lowered his head, "I'm still single..."

Field coughed lightly, "I am a non-marriage person."

Pilots Silva and Nguyen Hong Anh looked at each other and then held each other's hands without saying a word.

Well, you are all great.

"Anyway, practice for me!" Zheng Yan said loudly, and then she scratched the back of her ear. The slight headache made her a little impatient, "Landing must be done in groups, and there must be crew members staying on board Shuguang 7. Although everyone has to land in the end, I guess you all can’t wait..." She paused, then chuckled, "The three crew members with the worst training performance will stay behind on Shuguang 7 and wait for another half a year to land!"

(End of this chapter)