The Laptev Virus

Sarah looked despondently out the window at the darkening summer sky. “No, not all of them, but it still totally sucks. I mean, they didn’t even do the dying part right. We had expectations about how many would be taken ill based on the quantity of virus they received, but what we got was a weird mix of mice dying at low dosages and mice living at high dosages. I just don’t get it. I mean, we’ve been working with mice and with viruses for a long time. We’re not rookies who didn’t design an experiment properly. Something is definitely amiss and I haven’t figured it out.”

John listened quietly as he drove, but Sarah said no more. “I don’t know, maybe some of the mice were different strains? Or some were hardier to begin with…”

“Good guesses, but no, they checked all that. There were a few differences between the mice, but those differences showed up pretty evenly in both groups, the ones that lived and the ones that didn’t.”

“Hmm,” said John. “Maybe the techs got the mice mixed up in the vivarium before they gave them to your lab?”

Sarah had also thought about that scenario. “It does seem like the most likely explanation, you’re right, but it’s baffling given the genetic similarity of all the mice. The ones that are altered with tumors or other genetic defects are usually also quite obviously different at the DNA level, and close parentage among the genetically modified ones is not common. Oh, and the other thing we found is that some of the mice seem to be… contaminated with something. It’s really strange.”

“Contaminated,” said John solemnly, and a heavy silence flooded the car for a moment. The “c” word, as Sarah sometimes called it, was a nightmare for all researchers.

“Contaminated,” she repeated, seeing the annoying purple dots in her mind’s eye. “I don’t know for sure, but we saw these strange little specs in their brain cells. Not all the mice have them, mind you. But… actually, the more I think about it, the more those little dots look like cysts to me. I said as much to Drew and Tally, but they think it might be something else. Still, I’m only working on a hunch. I don’t know how it could have happened or how these mice could have cysts in their brains without suffering any other collateral damage. It’s pretty strange.”

“And you’re doing tests to find out what those little dots are?” he asked, pulling the car into a parking spot. One of the great things about living in an apartment building close to the museum district was their short commute, especially at this hour of the evening. They got out and Sarah leaned on John, her leg now pulsing more painfully. “We gotta get you to the couch,” he said, gently leading her toward the door of their apartment.

Once she sat down and propped up her leg, Sarah sighed. “Yeah, that’s where we are. Drew and Tally left a few reactions running, just to see what we can come up with. But I’m starting to think that it’s also possible that those purple dots, that infection, contamination or whatever it is, may not even be involved in the way that the mice reacted to the virus.”

“A red herring?”

Sarah nodded. “It’s possible. I don’t think they’ve examined all of the mice to see which ones have dots, so we don’t know which ones are contaminated, or if the contamination is equally distributed among all the mice, you know. It could be that the contamination is found in both the living and the dead tissues. And maybe we just stumbled on those purple dots by chance and they don’t really mean anything.”

“Hmm,” said John, as he put on an apron and began composing their dinner. “Well, so back to your first situation. Why would some of the mice be living while others died? You said they had the same dosage?”

“The same dosage within different groups. So you have a group of mice, say Group A, who all get a low dose of virus delivered directly to their lungs. All should live or, if they die, then most of them should die. We have about 50% dying. Then we have Group B with a higher dose of virus. If 50% of Group A died, then you’d definitely expect a higher number of mice to die when they have more virus pumped into their lungs. But they don’t. It’s like 48% that die and the rest aren’t sick at all.

“Then we have Group C with an even higher dose of virus. These guys breathed a lot of virus and they should all be dead or on the verge of dying. But again, only about 50% of the mice die. The other 50% are fine and dandy. It just doesn’t make sense. The effects of the viruses should be dose dependent. The more you get, the worse off you are.”

John looked at her gravely, his eyebrows scrunched together, knife poised in mid-air over the carrots as he listened intently to her explanation. “Have you tried looking at other factors? Maybe they were fed differently, or maybe one group was inadvertently exposed to a vitamin?”