Case:Black - 26. Chapter 26

Penn State University Medical School

Virology Department

2115EST/2015CST

The images of the Pandora virus began to appear on Dr. Abraham Berger’s monitor. As that download completed, the download for the gene sequence began. Berger pushed his glasses up his nose and squinted as he looked at the images of the nasty little bugger.

Dr. Wells voice came in a little tinny on his speakerphone, “Are you getting it Abraham?”

“Yes. It’s coming in now. What are these spikes?”

“This is Liao. We think they are primary or alternate receptor sites.”

Berger snorted. “What does the gene map look like?”

Wells answered, “It looks like a 100% match with the White Sands pathogen and a 92% match with VEE. There are three discrete splices. Two are 3% of the genome and the other is 4%.”

Dr. Sanjay Singri, Berger’s aid said, “This work was done in the mid-eighties. What do you want to bet that these splices come directly from another organism?”

Wells said, “We thought so too. We’ve got a pattern matching search running on our database to see if we can figure out what they came out of.”

Singri said, “Dr. Wells, aren’t you working with Abigail Ames?”

“Yes. She seems to be a smart girl if a little on the quiet side.”

Singri chuckled and said, “Don’t let her hide. For her thesis, she sequenced the Ross River Valley fever virus and suggested applying existing anti-virals for its treatment.”

The Ross River Valley virus or RRV was an alphavirus that caused febrile illness and arthritis endemic to Ames native Australia.

Wells said, “Yeah, I can see where that could be useful. Abraham, do you think protease inhibitors might help?”

Berger said, “Maybe. We need to figure out how different this bug is from the rest of the brood. I know the guys over at John Hopkins are working on alphaviruses. I’ve got a couple of grad students looking at the literature.”

Wells said, “We need to figure out something fast. The hospitals are filling up and I’ve got a lot of people screaming for treatment guidance.”