"Dr. Bernstein?" asked Liz. "What are you doing there at this hour?"
"Well, the truth is I spent the night here working .... I sort of got fixated on a rather interesting problem. That problem is - well your testing actually."
"Is there something wrong with the babies?"
"Babies?" asked Diane, looking at Jeff. Jeff nodded his head and silently mouthed the word 'twins...' Diane's eyebrows elevated momentarily, then she got a sort of sappy grin on her face as she looked back at Liz. But then the grin went away as she remembered the words...
'something wrong with them...?'
"Liz.....?"
Liz looked at Diane Evans ... and her father. This conversation involved both of them too...
"Just a minute, Dr. Bernstein. I want to put this on speakerphone. There ... can you still hear me?"
"Yes I can, Liz. By the way, please call me Rachel."
"Thank you Dr. Berns... Rachel. Is there something wrong with the tests?"
"Well, wrong is a kind of value-laden word, Elizabeth. I did some preliminary genome studies on the placental villus samples and they were both - well, certainly unusual to say the least. Linda Huntington tells me that you are quite good at biology and have been doing some reading in genetics as well for the last few weeks...."
"Yes. I've read several of the basic books about human genetics, and then two medical genetics books, your
Human Molecular Genetics, and Jorde's
Medical Genetics, also Emery's
Elements of Medical Genetics, although I don't think I understood the third chapter....."
"Well, that chapter was poorly written, I understand he's doing a whole rewrite in the next edition but.... well, I must say I'm impressed. The med students in the class I teach at the university certainly don't do that much reading for the class I teach them."
"I've sort of had a lot of motivation lately," said Liz.
"I rather expect you have. Well, all that background will help, but I'm not just too sure how MUCH it will help, because we have a little bit of an enigma here. The biological material from the paternal donor - the father - is a little bit unusual. Actually, it's very unusual, but as to whether it's in any way harmful... that's a little bit more difficult to discern.
First of all, the two pregnancies are - at the chromosomal level - quite normal. That is they have the right number of chromosomes and no chromosomal abnormalities at the macro level. Do you want to know the genders by the way? Some women do - some don't, because it tends to create an emotional attachment that might affect their decision to carry the pregnancies to term."
"I think I'd like to know, ...Rachel. I'm beginning to realize that ... well that process has probably already taken place."
"Well, you have one of each. At the macro level you have a perfectly normal male chromosomal pattern and a perfectly normal female chromosome pattern. It's at the genome and the gene level that something is a little different. Actually, something is quite different, but because it is sort of unique it's difficult to predict with any degree of certainty the consequences of it except in one small area.
Because we have a blood sample from you, we can sort of subtract that from the fetal genomes and get a pretty certain picture of just how much of this - I hate to call it an abnormality but I guess there aren't any better terms for it - this strangeness anyway - comes from him."
"Strangeness...?"
"Liz, I'm sure you are familiar with the term
'junk DNA'?...?"
"Yes."
"Well almost all this 'strangeness' is confined to the 'junk DNA'. In particular it seems confined to that part of the 'junk DNA' that we really do think we understand ... almost as if it had been placed there intentionally."
"Intentionally?"
"I'm sorry, it's been a long night and I did not get a lot of sleep. My mind wanders before my second cup of coffee, and I haven't yet had even my first. The point is there is something in 'junk DNA' called
pseudogenes, are you familiar with the term?"
"Not really...."
"A Pseudogene is like a gene except it has lost its function. That is, maybe somewhere in our evolution there was some gene that was dreadfully important to us - perhaps it created some vitamin when we were exposed to sunlight - but now we get that through our diet instead. Or perhaps some distant evolutionary ancestor had spines like a sea urchin but we haven't used that gene for millions of years. It just sits there turned off ... and never does turn on. It looks like a gene and maybe once was a gene but now it's just sort of ... well, like a disk drive that had the address for old information deleted but was never reformatted, to use an electronic example. It truly is 'junk' that will never be reused, but something needs to fill that space to ensure the
tertiary structure of the DNA itself stays normal...."
"So it has to sort of hold the real DNA in place, but it doesn't really do anything," said Liz.
"That's precisely right - except the father of these children - as I said - it would almost appear that these areas have been ... well I would almost use the word 'pruned' in some areas and a different sort of DNA substituted in these places."
"What do you mean..... different sort?"
"Well, it's different than the normal DNA pseudogene sequences certainly - not that THAT would appear to make any functional difference in most of the rest of the DNA - the tertiary structure is maintained EXACTLY as it had been. It's just that - well - that wouldn't normally be even possible - the DNA sequences just wouldn't work that way with the new DNA put in, except at the end - where the ... I guess you would call it 'splice' takes place ... there's a special - rather unique bit of DNA. It allows that attachment."
"What's unique about it?"
"Honey...that's the truly fascinating part. Do you understand how the backbone of DNA is the deoxyribose?"
"Yes..."
"Well, to make the attachment come out with the correct tertiary structure, at one small area in the sequence, the deoxyribose used is
l-Deoxyribose, the mirror image of the normal d-Deoxyribose. That's the first time I'm aware of that ever being found in nature. That shouldn't be there at all and even if if it is, it shouldn't be something that should be able to continue cell division because I wouldn't think the body would have the enzymes to even handle it.
Strangely enough in the cell culture it doesn't hurt a thing. It just reproduces a true copy of the modified nucleotide - which must mean that part of the other pseudogene-looking genetic material is now coding for the enzymes needed to do this. It obviousl yworks in the cell culture and - since you got this from your ... partner .... it apparently works in him too."
"So is this a mutation?"
"Well, nothing in science is impossible, but I don't really see how. But then, I'm not sure exactly how this would EVER happen."
"So are you saying ... this was done on purpose?"
"No, of course not. We simply lack the capability to do this on purpose - at least for a few more decades, and back when your ... partner ... was born, assuming he's about your age or older, we'd have never even been able to discover the weird splicing at all."
"So....what does this mean .... for our babies I mean...?"
"That's an excellent question and I'm not at all certain I can give you a complete answer. I've done a series of metabolic tests and the only thing I found - and then I traced that back to one [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_gene]regulator gene[/url] and confirmed it - was interference with one area of enzyme synthesis. One of those areas of unusual DNA sort of overlaps - not really of course, but that strange mirror deoxyribose at the end sort of almost shuts off the regulator gene for a certain enzyme -
alcohol dehydrogenase."
"Alcohol dehydrogenase?"
"It's an enzyme that lets us detoxify alcohol. It's not the only one. The
Cytochrome P450 system can do that as well, although not as well and certainly not as quickly. Once again, it's obvious this isn't a lethal deficiency, since the cells do multiply and since of course your partner himself is alive. But even at that - man I'll bet he's a cheap drunk..."
"Cheap drunk?" said Liz into the phone, with a look of puzzlement on her face. Her father quickly added an explanation.
"He ... uh ... can't hold his liquor very well, dear."
Doctor Bernstein apparently heard, and chuckled. "In this case that's a bit of an understatement," said the doctor,"...actually, should the two of you get back together I'd suggest you wear eau de toilette and not actual perfume. I'd worry about even the trivial amount of alcohol in perfume could make him a little loopy. OK, that's a little bit of an exaggeration maybe, the perfume on you I mean. But I wouldn't want anyone to give him after shave and then expect him to be the life of the party, although actually he might be briefly - before he crashed. Eventually his Cytochrome P450 would clear the alcohol out of course."
"And the babies....?"
"Liz, I honestly don't know. I don't honestly see that there would be any problem with them other than their own hypersensitivity to alcohol, but there are multiple copies of several different sorts of totally new genes in them - and of course during the fusion of the gametes your DNA and his DNA got swapped around and ... well, it's hard to tell if that will effect anything. Basically, all I can predict with certainty is that if the fetuses go to term, you don't want them to do any drinking - at all. Basically, Liz, that's all I can give you. Perhaps if your partner could come up here - let me do some somatic testing on him - I could tell what those new genes - or pseudogenes - really do, if they do anything at all. Until then, all we have is speculation."
"Thank you, Rachel. I'll talk to my partner and see if he will cooperate."
"Well, whatever you decide, Liz, good luck to you. I'll keep these results filed away until you tell me what you want to do with them. For right now though, I need to get to bed. This was wonderfully stimulating, but I'm not twenty years old any more. Pulling 'all-nighters' is something better left to you young people."
After hanging up the phone, Liz shook her head in disgust. "It was all my fault. I tossed that alcohol in his face and practically poisoned him. None of this was his doing. He was minding his own business - just trying to help me and keep me safe - and I did all this to him."
"Liz, it isn't just your fault," said Diane,"... if Max knew about this he could have trusted his parents. We could have gotten this researched and maybe treated and ... and he could have been honest with you about the REASON he was reluctant to get in a relationship. Hell, maybe my children could have been honest with me about this."
"But what if they were scared? What if their biological mother had the same problem but didn't know what it was? Maybe she drank a beer a day or something - maybe she gave the kids a beer because she WAS impaired..."
"Oh dear," said Diane. "Maybe that DID happen. I've wondered for years what sort of a terrible parent would never even teach their children how to speak ... never toilet train them ... let a couple of five or six year-olds wander naked in the desert and never even come looking for them. I've read that 20% of people have some sort of alcohol related problems. Can you imagine if you were an alcoholic and had this disorder?"
Liz's hands went toward her abdomen protectively. "That wouldn't have to happen. If their mother taught them not to touch alcohol...."
Jeff looked at his daughter and smiled. "I think I can see the way that this decision is going, and I think I approve. I do have to ask you though Liz,... are you worried about those other gene-thingys that Dr. Bernstein was talking about?"
"Worried? A little I guess. I'm starting to think that parents are constantly worried about their children..."
"You got THAT right," said Diane and Jeff simultaneously.
Liz smiled and continued, "... but Max seems OK, and unless he tells me something really frightening when I talk to him ... I'm keeping our babies. If Max doesn't WANT to be their father I can't help that..."
"He'd BETTER want to be their father," said Diane, "... because I'm damn sure going to be their grandmother..." She put her arms around Liz and hugged her warmly, "I never had real little ones to play with. Mine were walking when I brought them home."
Jeff looked at his daughter, just praying that somehow this would all work out.
Back at the Sheriff's Office, things weren't near as pleasant. There hadn't actually been a jail break from the Chaves County Sheriff's office since the era of Billy the Kid. There wasn't an established procedure for this and the accusations were flying back and forth.
"Well how could you let him just friggin' WALK-OUT!" screamed Pemberton, "... don't you even LOCK the friggin' doors?"
"The doors WERE locked," shouted the deputy who had been on the desk. The female deputy nodded her head in agreement.
"It might have helped if the ARRESTING OFFICER had told us that this kid was an expert at picking locks," replied the female deputy.
"I still think you forgot to lock the cell door," insisted Pemberton.
"The cell door, and the door to the jail itself? And the patrol car...?," said the desk deputy, "... and we HAVE every key to the patrol car, so we KNOW he picked that lock."
"...which means that he probably had no problem unlocking the 12 gauge shotgun that was locked into the front of the car, or the M-16 that was in the trunk either," said the female deputy, "... which mean now he's armed and dangerous..."
"Well if EITHER of you had really been paying attention instead of...."
"SHUT UP!," said Jim Valenti, "... now is NOT the time for us to be fighting about ourselves. We need to get this sorted out immediately. We need to contact the state police and get them looking, we need to contact our own people out there and get them looking as well, talk to the Border Patrol too, they've got a lot of people out there, and we need to get in touch with Diane Evans..."
"The kids mom?" said Pemberton in disbelief, "...how about warning the Parkers? The girl is the one at risk..."
Jim Valenti looked at Pemberton. He wasn't at all sure the boy was any threat to Liz Parker at all, but no doubt there'd be hell to pay once Jeff Parker found out about this. "Give the Parker ranch a call and let Jeff know too," he told Pemberton.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (I've always wanted to say that)"
"Can I hitch a ride with the two of you out to my car?" asked Diane.
"Hitch a ride? Where is your car?"
"Back by the road hidden in the bushes. I didn't want that deputy up on the ridge line to see me drive up. It was pretty plain that Deputy Pemberton didn't want me to talk to Liz, and I figured between him and you you'd prevent it if you saw me coming."
"Deputy up on the ridge line? But.... Pemberton said there wasn't going to BE any more surveillance of Liz .. that if he did that you'd use it in court to claim that the Sheriff's office didn't actually think your son was guilty."
"Daddy, I told you - Max couldn't be guilty..."
"But I saw the car - it was clear you WERE under surveillance. If it wasn't the sheriff's department...," said Diane.
"... and since Max ISN'T the guy who tried to kill me...," insisted Liz.
Jeff Parker felt fear hit him in the pit of his stomach. Not fear for himself - but fear for his daughter.
"Then it's probably the guy up on the ridge line," said Jeff.