The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

in her peripheral vision that Jessica just rolled her eyes at Mike, and also that the two have been standing close together the whole time. Leon interrupts her thoughts by clearing his throat loudly above the humming of fans and equipment—“I think we all agree.”

“Alright. Everybody follow.”

While Todd talks them through the rows of shelves and open lab spaces, Carmen steals the occasional glance at Greg, who seems less talkative than usual—she wonders if he somehow knew the email to her had been sent.

“On the methodology. First we take the fibroblast samples from your skin. We take those skin cells and reprogram them. Basically we induce pluripotency again. We do this by using retroviruses to insert genes that encode transcription factors into the cells. These genes are then read by the cell’s own internal machinery, and then revert back to pluripotency. Effectively, we’ve transformed an adult cell back into its original embryonic state. Which means that from there it can differentiate into anything.”

“What happens if you just let it grow?” Carmen asks.

“It develops into a teratoma—a cancer basically, a big cell mass, but it would still manage to produce the normal germ layers: endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. You might find some hair or teeth or something, some stuff that looks like gut. For the cerebral organoids we removed the part that differentiates into the central nervous system and grow it separately.”

They’re all grouped outside the door to a Faraday cage, waiting for Todd as he continues describing the process, until finally Carmen yells—“Just let us in!” to general laughter.

As they enter—“The organoids grow in Matrigel, which is just this substance that gives it all the nutrients it needs to develop. Once it’s grown enough to attach to the dish we transplant it into a separate bioreactor.”

The room is extremely warm. A table is against the far wall of the space, illuminated by a giant red heat lamp strung up above it. On the table are lined up eight tubular vats—they look like modified Erlenmeyer flasks, but at their top is inserted a ridged plastic engine. The beveled edges very gently stir the fluid, which glows pinkish under the red lights. At the bottom of each vat sits a cerebral organoid. They are pale colorless lumps. But not uniform in structure. Some have bumps and ridges others don’t have, while one has a deep central groove. Another has a large cataract-white rounded protuberance. They look truly mysterious, alien, and in their whiteness, their colorlessness, they impress upon the observers their protean nature.

“In the bioreactors,” Todd continues, “it can grow in 3D so it starts to differentiate into a recognizable cerebral phenotype. Neurons, ganglia, glia, and so on. All in a manner similar to the cortex. There’s even the cortical layers.”

Mike approaches one of the vats, poking a finger at an organoid—“What’s this liquid?”

“That’s the Matrigel. The stirring creates currents so the organoid gets this continuous nutrient bath.”

“Oh my god, they’re so big!” Carmen exclaims, examining the lump nearest to her, as large as a baby’s fist. “The last paper had them at, what, ten millimeters? The diameter must be three, maybe even four inches! How did you solve the problem of blood supply?”

Todd blushes at Carmen’s words—“Actually it was a rather ingenious idea we had. We provide a structure for them to grow around, like a—”

“A tree?” Carmen asks, glancing at Kierk, struck by a sense of déjà vu. The flash of the great tree Yggdrasil at night. But while Todd is still nodding, she exclaims—“Oh! You mean like a garden trellis for a growing plant!”

“That’s, that’s exactly—”

“But that doesn’t solve the blood supply problem,” Carmen continues, “unless . . . wait, unless it was a tree that was both porous and hollow! That way the Matrigel circulates to the inner cell mass that normally gets starved because there’s no vascular system!” She looks over to Todd for confirmation, who is flabbergasted.

“Yeah, exactly . . . an artificial vascular system of our making. It really does look like a tree, but small and fine. Like you said, porous and hollow, so the Matrigel can reach the inner cell mass. The organoid grows around it. It took us . . . a really long time to figure out . . .” He’s still ogling Carmen.

“Applications?” Alex asks, standing back from the table, unnerved.

“Oh, everything! If you’re suffering from a neurological disorder, we can make a few of these from a skin biopsy. We can test drugs on them before we try them on you. Check toxicity levels. Or identify the etiology of the disease. This is the future of personalized medicine.”

“So whose is whose?” asks Jessica.

“Oh . . . well I think that we just labeled the samples as they came so whatever order—”

“I was second,” Carmen says, sliding up to hers. They quickly sort themselves, and soon each Crick Scholar is contemplatively face-to-face with their own cerebral organoid. Kierk is squatted between Carmen and Alex. Up close his organoid is just as pale and colorless but no longer so lump-like; indeed, it has shallow convolutions on its surfaces. It reminds him of the surface of Europa, with its crags and vents and canyon lines betraying the deep ocean within. Like some Precambrian sea creature it waves slightly in the current but is sessile, anchored to the glass base by a near-invisible stalk that must be the trunk of the tree. If Kierk looks close enough, he can see the incredibly fine tips poking up through the organoid, the tops of the branches barely beyond, granting just a small amount of room left to grow. Little bits of sloughed-off brain matter bob in the slow circulation, swim by the main blob like fish passing around a great coral growth.

“So what are you going to do with our clones?” Kierk asks from his crouch.

“We don’t use that word.”

“But that’s what they are.” Kierk is still staring at the blob swaying in the current. “This is the excised neural tube of my clone that