The thylakoid membranes were densely packed with structures called photosystems, which were filled with chlorophyll. Chlorophyll was a natural compound that absorbed photon energy, and there was a huge variety of them. Two types of chlorophylls, called Pd1 and Pd2, formed a dimer, which was called P680. The number referred to the wavelength of light it absorbed: six hundred eighty nanometers.
A lot of chlorophylls have evolved to absorb different wavelengths of light in different plants and algae. Then, what kind of species was Palmaria romata, the algae Young-Joon brought?
Romata had evolved quite ravenously to absorb even the faintest light that barely reached the depth of the ocean. Romata had a huge variety of chlorophylls, so it could absorb light like a sponge, covering a wide range of wavelengths, from two hundred to three thousand nanometers. It basically covered ninety-nine percent of the entire light energy spectrum.
“Silicon solar cells could only absorb sunlight with wavelengths between three hundred to one thousand one hundred nanometers, which is mainly in the visible light region,” Young-Joon said. “Essentially, it only absorbs sixty percent of the entire solar energy and throws the rest away. But not the chlorophyll combination in this algae.”
Now, they had to purify the chlorophyll. They spun it in a centrifuge at thirteen thousand rpm[1]for thirty minutes to separate the cell lysate by density. They carefully drew up the supernatant in the very top layer with a pipette and transferred it into a fifty-milliliter tube.
“We can stop here for today. Tomorrow, we are going to purify them by attaching biotin to the chlorophyll and capturing them with streptavidin. We will run FPLC to collect the chlorophylls in high purity, and then apply them to one side of a semi-permeable membrane,” Young-Joon said. “Hae-Rim, could you help me since you’re good at FPLC?”
* * *
The experiment went on the next day as well. The Life Creation members chatted while Jung Hae-Rim collected the chlorophyll and purified it with high purity.
“But is this power generation technology using chlorophyll safe?” Cheon Ji-Myung asked.
“Safe?”“It’s not the first time your new technology has caused friction with established markets, right? But this… This is nothing short of an energy revolution…”
“I haven’t really paid much attention to that kind of thing since the time I was fighting with the Chinese president,” Young-Joon said, chuckling.
“Sometimes, I think you’re researching with your life on the line.”
“But this time might not be a big deal. Right now, about fifty percent of existing power plants are thermal-powered using coal, and twenty percent of them use natural gas. The rest are hydro, nuclear, and wind. Solar power basically has no share in the market,” Young-Joon said.
“If there is any friction with established markets, it will probably be with coal or natural gas producers, which overlap quite a bit. China will probably have a vested interest in protecting it given its overwhelming coal production,” Young-Joon added.
“Are we fighting with China again?”
“No. The coal in China comes from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. China has currently lost half of its control over Xinjiang, which may become independent at any time. Providing an alternative energy source from coal could be something that China actually likes. We’ll have to wait and see,” Young-Joon said.
He added, “And Yang Gunyu has worked with me before and is somewhat a reasonable man, so I don’t think he will have his claws out for us. I’m sure Director Kim will handle it well.”
“I guess it’s not like we are making oil or anything,” Park Dong-Hyun said, laughing.
“Should we do that, too?” Young-Joon asked.
“No.”
Park Dong-Hyun quickly shook his head.
“It’s done.”
Jung Hae-Rim came back with the FPLC results.
“Shall we get back to work then?”
Young-Joon pulled out a very thin piece of plastic out of his bag.
“I brought this from Lab Two. It’s a semi-permeable membrane that is very similar in composition to the eggshell membrane inside the egg.”
Young-Joon tightly packed the chlorophyll into a single layer in a uniform orientation on one side of the membrane. Although the photosystems had been destroyed and there were no chloroplasts or cells remaining, the mechanically arranged chlorophylls still retained all of their biological functions. They were going to now absorb vast amounts of light energy, including UV rays, and extract electrons from water.
“But according to Professor Kim Gwang-Myung, just making electrons is not enough to generate power; we have to dissociate them to one side to create an anode and a cathode,” Young-Joon said. “To do that, we are going to attach plastocyanin to the other side of the semi-permeable membrane with chlorophyll.”
Plastocyanin was capable of attracting electrons, and this was why it acted as an electron acceptor in the thylakoid membrane.
“Plastocyanin is a biomolecule that is expressed by genes in the cells of the romata leaves. What we’re going to do next is locally manipulate some of those genes to slightly destroy their function.”
“Destroy them?” Park Dong-Hyun asked.
“We’re going to change the eighty-fourth amino acid in plastocyanin, cysteine, to an arginine. This will loosen the bond of the copper atoms in plastocyanin, making it lose half of its ability to hold electrons,” Young-Joon said.
He explained, “It will pull the electrons to the other side of the membrane, and then it will drop them there. The high-energy electrons will be separated between the membrane, creating a huge potential difference, which will provide a current as it flows when the nodes are connected. Professor Kim Gwang-Myung will participate in development from this point onwards.”
* * *
As the experiment was going into its tenth day of development, Young-Joon had roughly finalized the important research and handed it over to the members of the Life Creation team.
He was meeting with four guests in his office, along with Kim Young-Hoon and Park Joo-Hyuk. They were the representatives from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, LifeToxin, and Woongdam Pharmaceuticals. The atmosphere was quite heavy.
“I saw the high-risk pathogen declaration form that the KCDC requires companies to fill out,” Young-Joon said. “All it requires is the name of the pathogen, the serotype, and the testing method. I think this is too little information.”
“Hm…”
Ji Young-Soon, the representative from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was groaning painfully.
“Then how should we develop this…?” he asked.
“First, you should have data that sequences the entire genome of the pathogen with Next Generation Sequencing. That way, we can track it when it’s leaked,” Young-Joon said. “And if we had that data right now, there would be no need for LifeToxin and Woongdam Pharmaceuticals to fight right now, as we could have just compared the DNA from the two strains.”
“True…” replied Ji Young-Soon in a dejected voice.
“And you need a plan for how these high-risk pathogens are going to be stored and isolated. They’ll only be handled in a lab with a high biosafety rating because it’s so toxic, but something like a logbook for the liquid nitrogen tank where the bacterial specimens are stored needs to be created. You have to note down when and how much of the bacteria was taken out by who, how it was cultured, and how they were disposed of,” Young-Joon said.
He added, “The lack of such a manual is the reason this is happening. Especially since it’s a bacterium that can cause mass death, shouldn’t we be more careful in handling it?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m here today because Mr. Ryu said he would shed light on the origin of the strain,” said Hong Myung-Woon, the representative of LifeToxin. “It would be great if the regulations on microorganism control were stricter, but it wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for unscrupulous companies like Woongdam Pharmaceuticals.”
“...”
Young-Joon put his hand on his forehead as if he had a headache.
“How many nuclear weapons do you think it would take to kill half the population of Seoul?” Young-Joon asked.
“Pardon?”
“They say a nuclear weapon as powerful as ten kilotons of TNT can kill about three hundred forty thousand people. Even a rough estimate shows that you’ll need one hundred fifty kilotons, which means you need about fifteen atomic bombs used in the Third World. If you’re using sarin nerve gas, you would need one thousand five hundred tons,” Young-Joon said. “How much botulinum toxin do you think you’ll need?”
“...”
“About four hundred grams. For anthracis, you would need about seventeen kilograms,” Young-Joon said.
He added, “Of course, this number is based on a lethal dose injected directly into the human body. Since you can’t line up everyone and inject them, it wouldn’t be this toxic. Even if it leaked, it wouldn’t kill that many people because it would be airborne and diluted. That’s why Botox, which is developed as a weaker form, is relatively simple to handle.
“But the release of the strain that produces it is a completely different matter. Imagine if someone engineered it so that it was capable of living in an aerobic environment and released it into the Han River. What do you think will happen?”
“No, who would do something like…”
“They might! It hasn’t been long since the anthrax gas was released at the GSC conference!” Young-Joon shouted in frustration.
“...”
“How many scientists or producers culture and handle that strain in a day?” Young-Joon asked.
“Um… I don’t know, maybe a thousand people…?”
“You wouldn’t have a thousand people a day looking at, touching, moving, and working on a nuclear weapon with an explosive power in the kilotons, right?” Young-Joon asked. “If a nuclear weapon like that existed in Seoul, what kind of security would it be under?”
“It would be at the highest level of security at the national level,” said Ji Young-Soon.
“We’re working with that kind of thing every day. A strain like that being leaked is not just some industrial spy stealing technology. And the fact that you can’t even track it down and are in a legal battle for corporate profit…”
Young-Joon let out a sigh.
“I completely agree. If it were us, we wouldn’t even be able to show our faces because we would be so ashamed,” said Ji Hak-Gi, the representative of Woongdam Pharmaceuticals.
“What?!” Hong Myung-Woon shouted sharply. “It’s a fact that Woongdam Pharmaceuticals took our strain!”
“You keep slandering us with your ridiculous delusions,” Ji Hak-Gi said. “As I’ve said many times, Woongdamn Pharmaceuticals performed our own microbial identification from manure at a stable in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, and that is where we isolated our botulinum strain from. We searched almost all the land in Gyeonggi-do to find it and spent hundreds of millions of won to isolate it.”
“I will figure that out for you,” Young-Joon said.
“Pardon?”
“Stop fighting about who stole it with circumstantial evidence like CCTV footage, and just give me the strains. I will use NGS to cross-examine their whole genomes to analyze any genomic similarities.”
“Oh!”
Ji Young-Soon smiled brightly.
“We would be grateful if you could do that for us. Both parties have been reluctant to trust verification from third parties, but… Doctor Ryu is one of the most ethical heroes in the scientific community, right?” he said. “What do you think? Would you like to leave it to Doctor Ryu?”
“... Alright,” Hong Myung-Woon replied. “We will submit it as court evidence as soon as we get the results.”
“Then you two can take care of the fight from there,” Young-Joon said. “Mr. Commissioner, please just work on reorganizing the surveillance system for high-risk organisms. I think it needs a complete update.”
“Oh, alright. I will make sure to take care of it.”
“Sir,” interrupted Kim Young-Hoon, who was on his phone.
“Yes?” Young-Joon replied.
“Lab Seven just contacted me.”
“About what?”
“They are going to activate the chlorophyll solar cell for the first time.”
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