The Laptev Virus

Emile nodded. “We took samples from striated muscles, as well as different organs, to see if there was a difference between the mice that lived, which we’ve called the ML’s, and the ones that didn’t make it, which we’re calling the MBD’s.”

“MBD’s, right,” said Shane, chuckling under his breath as if he was just getting a joke. “I just love that name.”

There were a few more giggles from Tally and Miquela and then Emile said, “It was Drew’s idea.”

Sarah was amused, in spite of herself. “Drew, would you like to share what that acronym means?” asked Sarah, a small smile playing on her lips.

All eyes turned to Drew and he said, “Well, okay, it was a hasty decision.” When no one responded after a few more seconds he said. “All right! Don’t get bent out of shape. It stands for Mice that Bit the Dust, okay?”

Everyone chuckled for a moment and then Emile continued with his account. “We preserved the dead mice as soon as we found them, to prevent tissue breakdown that might impair our ability to see what was going on. We took the samples in triplicate, fixed and stained them and examined them early this morning.”

“In most tissues and organs, we saw no difference between the two groups. However, if you’ll click on the picture there,” said Drew, indicating a file that revealed an enlarged photograph. “We were almost through examining the tissue samples when we got to the brain tissue slide. Since we hadn’t seen any differences so far on any of the other organs or the muscle tissue, we were planning to do an ELISA assay with the blood, using antibodies from human HeLa cells to detect the presence of the virus, but before we even got to that, we saw this.” Here Drew stopped and pointed to a dark circular shape with the tip of his pencil.

Sarah glanced at the slides of tissue projected on the screen. She saw that in some of the mice, the regularly shaped pink cells of the brain, long and sinuous, had large, dark purple circles inside the main body of the cell, with lots of dark little dots. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and asked “What are those? They’re not supposed to be there, are they?”

Emile shook his head, no. “I’m not certain what they are, but some of the mice have them and some don’t. Whatever they are, they don’t seem to be having a negative health effect on the mice. They look and act perfectly normal. No changes in eating, sleeping or learning behavior.”

For a moment everyone sat there looking at the translucent, pink images of brain cells on the slides on the screen. The purple dots were not in all the slides, but from what Sarah knew, they should not have been in any of them.

Sarah sat back and crossed her arms as the full impact of what she had been told began to sink in. Those little dark purple dots were definitely a problem. A humongous problem.

Or maybe she was jumping to premature conclusions. Perhaps if they had only taken samples from the dead mice, the dots could have been a product of metabolic decay. “You took these samples from living mice as well?” she asked.

“Yeah, this picture on the screen is from a biopsy of a living animal,” he said.

Sarah felt her shoulders tightening. “So the results that we have gathered over the past several weeks with the mice are pretty much meaningless?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Emile and Drew kept their eyes fixed on the image of the brain cells on the screen, but Emile’s face was drained of color.

Sarah closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t believe it! Could there be a mistake? Maybe the slides were dirty before the mounts were made…” It was a lame suggestion, she knew. The dots were clearly stained with the same dye as the cells and there was no way that they could be random dust motes.

“We’ve double and triple checked,” said Drew, obviously as frustrated as Sarah and Emile. “There’s no doubt that some of the control mice are contaminated. And whatever has contaminated those mice is definitely there in those brain cells.”

Sarah felt like she would burst from frustration. She had just spoken with Rhonda the day before, assuring her of their progress and now this had happened.

Emile and Drew returned their gazes to the floor. Even Shane had the good sense to keep quiet.

“Well, some of the mice weren’t contaminated,” said Drew. “Some of the samples from the dead mice…”

Sarah whirled on him. “Oh, I guess that should make me feel better? How many, perchance, would you say, were clean?”

“We, eh, we don’t have exact numbers,” stammered Emile.