Epoch of Twilight Chapter 416: Gene Modification Efforts

Chapter 416: Gene Modification Efforts

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Luo Yuan’s instructions were quickly carried out by the staff in the lab. Everyone had put down what they had on hand and immediately helped to move the documents from the archives over to his office. Although many of the researchers were unhappy with his order, they did not dare to disobey Luo Yuan as he was the vice-captain of the Firearms Bureau and the strongest evolved human in the Reconstruction Area. As someone who was against the idea of genetic research on evolved humans, Luo Yuan’s presence in the lab was placing a huge amount of stress on the staff that served him.

The researchers were valuable to the Reconstruction Area but their value depended on what/who they were researching on. Perhaps to them, the mon evolved human was nothing more than a test subject, however, they could not say the same for the vice-captain of the Firearms Bureau. Though they did know much, they knew for a fact that when an outsider such as Luo Yuan was given special permission to manage the highly profound genetic lab of the country, he had to be someone powerful.

Luo Yuan’s office was approximately 50 square meters which was definitely not small. However, it was being harder and harder to move around as more and more documents were brought into the office. Luo Yuan gave a gesture of gratitude and closed the door after everyone had left. He was not bothered that some of them were unhappy with him. He knew that there would definitely have been people who would be unhappy with him even if he was nice to them. Imagine yourself taking orders from an outsider who did not have a single clue about running a lab. He decided that it was better if he was just straightforward with them as long as he did not screw things up on his part.

After making himself a cup of tea, he flipped through the piles of documents. His Intelligence (currently at 15) allowed him to read at a fast speed and he was able to retain every piece of information he had just read word for word. However, most of the documents were useless in his opinion and he tossed them aside after scanning through a few pages. For instance, one thesis report was about the discovery of a new gene splicing method which made a virus lose its contagiousness after a group of genes had undergone mutation.

After reading through the piles of documents and thesis reports, he realized that the gene research in the Reconstruction Area had not made any groundbreaking discoveries. The research direction that he had wanted to go on was like finding a needle in a haystack where everything depended on luck and there was no way that he could have directly reconstructed the gene with their current knowledge.

For someone like Luo Yuan who was able to observe the genes directly with his naked eye and even conduct a minor operation on it, he knew that it was an energy and time draining process for the specific enzyme gene to splice and be carried into the acceptor cells through the circular DNA. The efficiency of the procedure was pathetically low and it felt like the process was from the Stone Age. He could have altered any of the cells or virus genes in any way that he wanted in the blink of an eye.

However, to be fair, not all the documents were useless as the knowledge and findings regarding the functions of genes were relatively accurate. There was a total of three billion bases in the human body whereby 98% of them were occupied by invalid DNA. The remaining 2% was approximately made up of 30,000 genomes and among them, 50% were identified as functional by the researchers that had conducted the experiment. The information had saved Luo Yuan the trouble of screening through each and every one of them, which would have otherwise cost him a lot of time. However, details regarding the functions of the genomes were not stated accurately and the lack of accuracy in observation, operation and control management of the experiment had made the judgment unclear as there were many uncertainties involved. Besides that, through the documents, Luo Yuan noticed that the 98% of the invalid DNA was not entirely useless as some of the evolved humans came about from them.

However, the cloning of humans was perfect. An artificial embryo could potentially grow into a baby within 10 days by mixing them with nutrients which were rich in active energy. The baby would have turned three years old within the first month. The intelligence and physical strength of a clone would have been no different from an ordinary human even after they had stopped taking the nutrients as long as they had been given the proper care and teachings required. In addition, because the clone had been fed with active energy since it was an embryo, it would gradually excel to bee better than an ordinary human which had been developed through the pregnancy stage for 10 months even at birth.

It was ing close to the afternoon when Luo Yuan was scanning through the last pile of documents. Once he was finished, he tossed the documents to one corner and stood up. He then walked over to Professor Fei’s office which so happened to have just been next door.

"Get everyone to the human clone cultivation zone now."

Professor Fei did not hesitate and immediately went around to inform everyone. Within minutes, more than 200 people who were working in the lab had gathered in the cultivation zone. Luo Yuan did not expect that there were so many of them working in the lab and only realized when they had gathered in the cultivation zone.

The cultivation zone occupied 10,000 square meters of land which was rather massive and spacious. It was filled entirely with clone pods and just by glancing around, Luo Yuan knew that there had to be at least 30,000 of them. Most of them were not empty. A majority of them had been used to contain the fetus of clones while a minority of them was carrying clones which were still in an embryonic state. It would have been a terrifying sight for an ordinary human as the fetus in the clone pods occasionally twitched.

Seeing how stunned Luo Yuan was at the sight of the clone pods, Professor Fei immediately explained, "Captain Luo, these are not experimental materials. We researchers have a conscience as well and even if we were using them as experimental materials, we would certainly have not used so many of them. Am I right?"

Somebody coughed.

Professor Fei laughed awkwardly and went on explaining, "Do not take this the wrong way. This is a mon practice for a biological research facility as it was not only an experiment lab but also a factory to produce human beings."

He then added in some jokes to the conversation before he continued to explain, "You should have known that the population in the Reconstruction Area has been constantly decreasing and that reproduction through natural means had been very low. Cloning is currently the best way to replenish our population growth. We have estimated a monthly target that we would like to hit and so far we have already produced roughly 250,000 human clones. Do not worry as the genes we had used for the cloning process had e from dead bodies. There would not be any…"

"Enough, you do not have to explain any further!" Luo Yuan stopped him. He then asked, "How many of the clone pods are empty?"

"The cultivation zone is under Professor Guan. I will get him to explain the details to you