CEO loves me with all his soul.-Chapter 112. Scientists talk.

Adrian walked into the laboratory quietly, pushing the glass door open with a soft hiss. The familiar sterile scent of ethanol and reagents calmed him. The morning light filtered through the blinds, casting shadows across the counters where test tubes, Petri dishes, and pipettes were neatly arranged. His notebook was already open, with scribbled notes from the night before — mostly DNA sequence variations and molecular pathway diagrams.

He brushed his fingers through his long hair and tucked it behind his ears, glancing at the monitors displaying live tracking of protein expression in the transgenic mice. In the center of the room stood Dr. Zara, dressed in her usual white lab coat, safety glasses pushed onto her head. Her expression was focused as she adjusted the microscope and clicked through fluorescent imaging results.

"You’re up early," Adrian said softly.

Dr. Zara didn’t look up. "Couldn’t sleep. The mice in chamber C3 showed unexpected phenotype expressions." She finally turned toward him, her tone a mix of fatigue and concern. "The formula you created... it’s not perfect yet."

Adrian’s smile faded. "Where exactly is it failing?"

Zara walked over to the main screen and pulled up the data logs. "Here," she pointed to a section of the report. "Your gene-editing solution was meant to stabilize the telomerase overexpression in the modified murine line. But instead of downregulating telomerase, the Cas9 complex triggered off-target effects—particularly on the BRCA2 locus."

Adrian moved closer, eyes scanning the data. "BRCA2... That explains the increased double-strand breaks in the test group."

"Yes," Zara said. "They’re undergoing apoptosis faster than anticipated. We need to reprogram the gRNA. It’s too promiscuous. The sequence you selected overlaps with a pseudogene in the same family — that’s causing the off-target activity."

Adrian pulled his notebook from the table and flipped through the pages. "I cross-checked the guide RNA against the murine genome... but I must’ve missed a partial match in the intronic regions."

Zara nodded. "You’re close, Adrian. But we can’t risk pushing this into the human model without stabilizing these reactions. Especially not when the whole goal is to create a heritable DNA stabilization therapy."

"I thought CRISPR interference with dCas9 might help maintain transcriptional repression," Adrian said. "I used a fusion with KRAB domains to silence the telomerase reactivator sequences." ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Zara gave him a sympathetic look. "It did reduce expression—but the epigenetic modifications weren’t stable. Look." She brought up a new slide: chromatin accessibility analysis.

"These open regions here," she explained, pointing to the ATAC-seq results, "are from the third-generation offspring of the modified mice. Even though they inherited the dCas9-KRAB complex, the histone markers—H3K9me3 and H3K27me3—faded by the second week postnatal. That means the repression isn’t heritable enough."

Adrian groaned, rubbing his temples. "So, we’re looking at a partial silencing, but nothing sustainable across generations."

"Exactly. And we haven’t even started proteomics profiling yet," Zara added.

Adrian walked to the next bench where their mass spectrometry results were displayed. He clicked open the LC-MS/MS files for group B. "Let’s see how the downstream proteome is being affected."

Zara leaned over. "We’ve isolated five differentially expressed proteins — major ones involved in DNA repair and cellular senescence. For example, RAD51 levels are abnormally high in the modified group."

"That might be a response to the double-strand breaks caused by the Cas9 misfire," Adrian mused.

"Correct," Zara said, "but then we get to p53 — it’s suppressed, and we didn’t intend that. That could mean a partial oncogenic activation."

"Which would defeat the whole purpose," Adrian whispered.

There was silence for a moment. The quiet hum of incubators and refrigerators filled the space between them.

Zara looked at him. "You’re trying to stabilize inherited mutations — you know that’s not just biochemistry. That’s evolution you’re trying to tame."

"I know," Adrian murmured. "But if we can engineer a safe way to stop mutations from propagating over generations, we can halt so many inherited diseases—Huntington’s, fragile X syndrome, certain types of breast cancers, even mitochondrial disorders..."

Zara crossed her arms and tilted her head. "You’re passionate, I get that. But passion without caution is dangerous."

Adrian nodded slowly. "I’ll redesign the gRNA. Add a PAM site buffer to reduce off-target binding."

"That’s a start. But let’s also think about using base editors instead. No double-strand breaks, just targeted C-to-T conversions. More precise."

"You’re right," Adrian said, pulling his chair up to the terminal and beginning to input notes. "Adenine base editors could offer a workaround. And if we use prime editing—"

Zara raised an eyebrow. "That’s ambitious. You’re proposing we prime-edit a telomerase suppressor pathway while maintaining cell viability?"

Adrian smirked slightly. "Ambition is what makes this field move forward."

Zara chuckled and pulled up another window. "Alright. But before we dive into prime editors, you need to see this." She handed him a stack of printed proteomics graphs. "This is from the kidney tissue of the treated mice. Notice anything?"

Adrian examined the graphs. "There’s downregulation of aquaporin channels?"

"Yes. And upregulation of inflammatory cytokines in the glomeruli. It seems your therapy is triggering renal stress in the long term."

"Cytokine storm as a side effect," Adrian murmured. "We’ll need to analyze the systemic effect of the therapy more broadly."

"I’ve already started preparing liver and heart samples for proteomics," Zara said. "But you should know — if this continues, the ethics board won’t approve animal model progression."

"I’ll fix it," Adrian said resolutely.

Zara watched him work for a few minutes. "You know," she said after a moment, "not many people your age think this deeply about molecular architecture. Most just want to publish something quick and flashy. But you..."

Adrian looked up at her. "I’m not doing this for a name. I’m doing it for people like Ethan. Like our daughter. Like anyone who ever got told that their condition is incurable."

Zara smiled slightly. "That’s what scares me about you."

Adrian blinked. "What?"

"You care so much... that I’m afraid you’ll break yourself trying to fix what evolution never intended to be fixed."

Adrian paused. He glanced over at the live camera feed showing Seraphina asleep in the crib upstairs. He smiled softly. "Maybe. But if someone doesn’t try, who will?"

Zara sighed and gave him a soft pat on the back. "Then let’s try it right. No short-cuts. First, we isolate the guide RNA library again. Then we test new prime editor variants. And this time," she said sternly, "you double-check pseudogene overlaps before running them."

Adrian grinned. "Yes, ma’am."

They both sat down at the bench. With a new batch of target sequences open on screen, and proteomics logs ready for analysis, the long day of data review began again.

--

Leclair lounged lazily on a cushioned bench, a cup of fresh juice in one hand and a teasing grin on his face.

"I swear, since Adrian’s gotten all those memories back from the experiments, he’s practically married to that lab," Leclair drawled, stretching his legs and flicking a peanut at Ethan, who sat across from him at the outdoor table, sipping iced tea.

Ethan raised an eyebrow and didn’t look up from the baby spoon he was using to feed little Aurelius, who sat in a high chair with his chubby fists full of mashed fruit. "He loves me more than that sterile lab. He just has a scientific itch to scratch."

Leclair snorted. "Scratch? Please, the man sleeps with genome sequences running through his head. I bet he murmurs amino acid chains in his sleep. ’Oh, lysine, you’re so acetylated tonight—’"

Ethan grabbed a grape from the plate and chucked it at him. "That’s rich coming from someone who once moaned in his sleep about a sword collection."

Leclair dramatically shielded himself and caught the grape midair with his mouth. "Touché, little brother. But be honest, don’t you ever feel a teensy bit jealous? The way Adrian looks at those protein charts... whew."

"Jealous?" Ethan leaned back, arms crossed. "Adrian loves me. He may flirt with bioinformatics, but I’m the one he kisses goodnight."

Leclair wagged his brows. "Kisses you goodnight? Sounds like the romance is already cooling off."

Ethan leaned forward, smirking. "You want romance updates, or do you want me to tell Adrian you dropped his lab notes last week while trying to spy on his protein purification process?"

Leclair gasped, scandalized. "You swore you wouldn’t bring that up!"

"And yet," Ethan said smugly, taking a slow bite of his sandwich, "here we are."

Augustin sat nearby, quietly feeding Aurelius another spoonful of mashed carrots. The baby was babbling happily, kicking his legs while squeezing a soft plush phoenix toy in one hand.

"They’re both ridiculous," Augustin muttered with a sigh, watching Ethan and Leclair now battling over the last piece of garlic bread.

"Give it," Ethan growled.

"I saw it first—"

"You’ve had three already!"

"I’m older! Seniority rules—!"

"Seniority my—!"

Augustin stood, calmly split the garlic bread into two perfectly equal halves, and handed each a piece with a glare. "Grow up. Your son is more mature than you both combined."

Leclair looked at Aurelius and grinned. "To be fair, he hasn’t discovered sarcasm yet."

Ethan tilted his head. "Or spite. Just wait till he turns four."

As the brothers chewed in mutual truce, Leclair suddenly leaned closer to Ethan with a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes. "So, when are you giving us another baby? You know Adrian would make the cutest pregnant man again. Glowing skin, hormonal tantrums, and all that."

Ethan rolled his eyes. "First of all, Adrian is still recovering from the last one. Secondly, if I even suggest it, I’m getting locked out of the bedroom. And third—" he paused dramatically, "—you’re projecting."

Leclair’s face went blank. "Excuse me?"

"You’re deflecting your own loneliness by focusing on our love life. Classic psychological defense."

Augustin choked on his water.

"I am not lonely!" Leclair barked. "I’m desirable. Dashing. Debonair."

The sourc𝗲 of this content is fre(e)novelkiss