The Laptev Virus

Once the mouse had been inoculated, it was then placed gently in a second bin. The mice would be drowsy for the rest of the day, but by the next day they would be recuperated—unless the virus was busy infecting it.

Sarah watched the procedure being repeated for each mouse, looking closely and rewinding as necessary to be sure that she had observed each step thoroughly from all of the angles of the three different cameras. When she finished, she slumped in her chair and ran her hand over her pony tail, absently teasing out the curls.

Nothing. There was nothing abnormal in the entire process. The video feeds confirmed that her researchers had been meticulous and there was no indication whatsoever that the contamination could have derived from faulty technique. Sarah sighed and turned off the video feed, now at the end of the second viewing. She rubbed her eyes. She still could not see how the results they had obtained could be explained. Why had some lived and some died across the spectrum of dosage levels? And how had some of the mice cells become contaminated with whatever those purple dots were? It made no sense. Sarah had worked with mice for years, often taking tissue samples from the brain, and she had never come across something like this before.

Her research had been devoted to finding a cure for the deadly African virus for years. Like all other viruses, HIV could not be grown on inert media, but rather required a living substrate. Most often chick cells derived from embryonic eggs were used to cultivate viruses, although human HeLa cells and even mouse cells could also be used. The cells were induced to grow on one inside wall of special rectangular shaped bottles which lay perfectly flat on trays.

A clear serum closely mimicking blood (without the red blood cells) was placed in the bottles so that the chick or human or mouse cells, growing like a translucent lawn along the bottom side of the bottle, were nourished with it. Then the cells were carefully infected with the virus which would reproduce madly, killing most of the cells. Once enough virus particles were obtained, the researchers could run different experiments on how to attack the virus.

For the initial Laptev virus experiments, her team had attempted to use both cells grown in bottles as well as live mice. However, it had soon become evident that the mice were a better option as they were mammalian cells and the virus thrived in them. Thus they had concentrated all of their efforts on using mice for the experiments.

She remained with her eyes fixed on the monitor, lost in thought. She had triple checked the techniques that her investigators had used, searching for mistakes or deviations from standard procedure that could explain the sudden change in events. None had surfaced. As the minutes elapsed, she became convinced that the contamination must not have occurred in the lab.

So, she thought, if it did not happen in BSL-4, then the mice must have been contaminated from the beginning. But how could that have happened? When did it occur? Why would only some of the mice be contaminated? And what exactly was it that had caused the contamination? What were those damn purple dots? Why were they only in the brain cells of some of the mice?

She looked at the clock hanging sterilely on the wall, like an impartial observer, not caring one whit about the rapidity of the passing minutes and hours which it marked. It was nearly eight. John had said that he needed to work late too, but now she called him and asked if he wouldn’t mind picking her up. Her foot hurt too much to drive back to their apartment by herself.

CHAPTER 16

“You are not going to believe the day I’ve had, John” said Sarah as soon as she settled herself into her seat in the car. Since he had been tied up in meetings all afternoon and she had been unable to reach him by phone earlier, she had decided to just wait and tell him the whole saga in person.

“Apparently, the oil company has been putting pressure on Rhonda because they want to open up drilling in the Arctic again, so she’s been coming down to my office for lots of meetings, and we have been updating her on our results pretty much on a daily basis.”

John nodded, looking at her briefly and then returning his attention to the road.

“Well, yesterday morning, just after my meeting with Rhonda, Emile came to my office and told me that some of the results just didn’t make any sense. I looked at his data, and sure enough. We had three groups of mice, receiving low, medium and high dosages of the virus, and they did not have the reactions that we expected.”

“What kind of reactions did they have?” asked John.

“They died.”

John whistled softly. “Ouch. All of them?”