Altered States (29 page)

After sourcing mugs of coffee, we took up comfy seats set by a large full-height window, looking out over a campus lawn, as neatly clipped as Venton’s beard. Then it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

‘You’d like to know why Gemma came to see us?’ Venton enquired.

‘I would.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Normally, of course, we wouldn’t divulge any information about another client. But this is ... a special case. This is a case about which ... I think you ought to know.’

‘Good. That makes things ... easier.’

He smoothed his beard as if contemplating where to begin. Finally, he figured it out. ‘You may be aware of the service offered by GenieTec. That is, to advise our clients of their relative risks with respect to a range of genetically-determined diseases, such that they might adjust their lifestyle accordingly. This is what people normally seek from us. Gemma, however, visited us for a rather different reason. She came to us with a specific puzzle to solve.’ He took a sip from his mug. ‘And in fact, she was turned away at first by one of our more closed-minded associates. But fortunately he told me about her and I got in contact.’

‘Why was she turned away?’

‘Because what she was suggesting just wasn’t within the realms of possibility according to my associate. According to science as we know it, even.’

‘But it was possible to you?’

‘The thing about the logical minds of most scientists is their desire to fit things into boxes. But nature just doesn’t fit into boxes. Our current simplistic understanding of anything is only ever a best guess until we uncover a whole other layer of complexity that we just aren’t expecting. Time and time again, throughout history, this has proven to be the case. Things,’ he paused for effect, ‘are never as simple as they appear. More coffee?’

‘No. Thanks.’

Venton crossed the room to the coffee jug simmering on a hotplate.

‘Allow me to digress for a moment,’ he said as he topped up his mug, ‘and tell you a little story that illustrates the point. A completely true story. Back in the nineties a woman, who we shall call Sara, needed a kidney transplant. Her family was tested to see if they were suitable donors. Sara was hoping for good news, but what she received was something entirely unbelievable instead. She was told that two of her three sons were
not her children
. Two of her sons shared no genetic material with their mother, even though she conceived them naturally with her husband, who was confirmed as the father.’

I thought about the logistics of this for a moment as Venton retook his seat opposite me.

‘That’s impossible, surely?’ I concluded.

‘Exactly how most experts saw it at the time. One specialist even suggested that Sara had sneaked off for secret fertility treatment with donor eggs; as this seemed more plausible than accepting there were things he did not understand. Fortunately, a more open-minded doctor vowed to solve the conundrum and after two years’ hard graft she finally cracked it.’

‘Go on.’

‘It turned out that Sara was what we call a chimera, a mixture of two different people; two non-identical twins that had fused in the womb and grown into a single individual. As a result she had two distinct sets of genes.’

‘Fascinating,’ I said genuinely. ‘But how does this relate to Gemma?’

‘Well, the first point of the story is that things are not always as straightforward as high-school biology lessons might make out. And the case of Sara is actually not so weird compared to some of the other stuff that’s happened during our evolution.’

‘This is the nice neat way it’s supposed to work. Species splitting off to form neat branches like this. But sometimes life has other ideas.’

He labelled one of the bottom leaf nodes ‘cow’ and another ‘snake’. Then he switched pens to red and drew a line between the two in a sweeping motion across the board.

‘Every cow on this planet has a fragment of DNA inherited from the snake family; a fragment which didn’t exist until long after any common ancestor.’ He circled the common ancestor in red as he said it.

‘How?’ I asked as I knew I was supposed to.

‘No one really knows for sure. Quite possibly a virus. Viruses are shovelling genetic material between species all the time, which makes a complete mess of this tree. In fact it makes it not a tree at all.’ He rapidly drew lines criss-crossing between the branches. ‘But let’s get back to you. The point is, DNA moves in mysterious ways ... sometimes.’

‘When we analysed Pearle’s genetic makeup, we identified a fragment of genetic material that did not come from her mother or her father. And thanks to your recent visit, I can now confirm –’

‘It had us stumped for quite some time. I enlisted the insights of a friend of mine and we pored over Gemma’s medical history. As you well know, there was one very significant medical event she experienced in her past, and this was what helped us finally crack it. It’s all related to a phenomenon called microchimerism.’

‘Good. During pregnancy, a mother and child’s biological systems are theoretically separate, but some rogue cells do pass between both, and can survive for many years in the other person. This is called microchimerism. It’s a more dilute version of Sara who we talked about earlier. But there’s one remarkable and beautiful twist to this natural feature of pregnancy.’

‘Go on.’

‘It was shown in a number of experiments – on mice of course – that during severe trauma, stem cells from the foetus can be employed to repair damage to the
mother’s
brain. There’s no reason to assume that this doesn’t happen in humans also.’

He let me think about this for a moment. The significant medical event in Gemma’s history Venton had referred to was when she almost died carrying our child. I started to realise where this was going.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked.

‘I’m saying that when Gemma was fighting for her life, pregnant with your child; when blood was draining from her body and millions of brain cells were dying by the second; an ancient survival mechanism kicked in. Stem cells from the unborn child were pumped into Gemma’s body to repair her brain. The child you lost ... sacrificed her own life to save her mother’s. So that’s how your genetic material was still present in Gemma when Pearle was born.’

I stood and walked to the window. I’m a smart guy and I understood all this, but my mind was on the verge of exploding, which was unfortunate considering what was still to come.

‘So, that’s all remarkable and exciting stuff. It’s maybe a million-to-one, maybe unique. But my guess is that it’s one of those things that happens quite a lot, like with Sara, but no one ever really notices. Why would they? Normally it would not manifest in any noticeable way. And that brings us to the next bit. As I’m sure you are already starting to realise, the next bit is twilight zone. Or it’s a Nobel prize waiting to be won.’ Venton twinkled. That explained why he was so keen to see me.

Okay, timeout for a moment. What Venton had just explained to me was, at least, very unlikely. What he was about to explain was extremely unlikely. The fact that they came together and occurred to me was therefore, who knows, billions-to-one. This may be leading you to doubt the credibility of my story, but don’t forget that there are seven billion people on the planet, and the reason you are reading
my
story is because something incredible happened to
me
. If you read a story about someone who hit the lottery jackpot
twice
then you may say it was ridiculous. But let me tell you, this actually happened too. Not only that, but the lucky couple in question, after playing for seventeen years, managed to hit the jackpot of two different lotto games on the
same
day. The odds? A mere twenty-four-trillion-to-one. Look it up.

The point is this, crazy shit happens. Take it from me. Just don’t bet on it.

Venton continued with his story. ‘It was quite fortunate that Gemma chose our company to visit. Else this may never have been uncovered.’

‘Only two percent of human DNA is considered to do anything useful – the remaining, often called junk DNA. This two percent is made up of discrete sections – or genes – which each play some role in determining an individual’s traits: height, eye colour, flappy earlobes and so on. Companies like ours only analyse a client’s genes. In fact, they generally only analyse a small subset of genes; those known to play a role in certain diseases. People don’t generally need to get their DNA sequenced to discover their eye colour. They have mirrors for that.’

‘So, how are you different?’

‘Well, the normal service we offer is not. But part of our research is to identify new gene candidates amongst the junk DNA. We do that by comparing sections of human DNA to that found in animals with common ancestors. If we discover that a particular fragment of DNA is present in both humans and say orang-utans, then it is likely that it has been preserved for a reason – that it performs some function, either now or in our recent history. So, when Gemma came along with her little conundrum we took a look at these gene candidates as well. That’s how we discovered a variant that hadn’t come from either of her parents. But there was something else significant as well.’

‘Yes. We contain in our makeup a whole bunch of archaic genetic material, accumulated throughout our entire evolutionary history. In every cell of your body you still harbour genetic coding for all the features of your ancestors – fins, scales, tails, everything. As you’ve probably noticed you don’t have fins and that’s because these genes were deactivated long ago – and many of them are now degraded beyond any use. Sometimes they get reactivated accidentally, resulting in babies born with tails or webbed fingers or body fur. They are known as atavisms. And sometimes they are reactivated on purpose. Nothing you do in your life can ever affect your genes, but you
can
alter their expression – turn them on and off. And what’s more, this alteration can persist over generations.’

Venton paused as if to check I was keeping up.

‘Still with you,’ I confirmed.

‘Good, because this has mind-blowing potential that few people are aware of. Environmental conditions experienced by a parent can affect the expression of genes in their offspring. The significance would be lost on most, but what we are talking about here is non-genetic evolution; dare I say it, non-
Darwinian
evolution. And it’s very real. For example, it has been shown, that even the
grand
children of malnourished wartime mothers tended to be smaller than average, even if they were healthy and well fed. The malnourished mother altered the expression of the genes she passed on so that her descendents would be smaller and so more likely to survive in times of short food supply.

‘Admittedly, there is no known mechanism for such a thing to occur between
father
and child, but, hell, it has, so let’s ignore that for a moment. The point is this: something happened to
you
over your life that has affected the expression of a number of your genes. And through some almost-miracle, this was passed on to Pearle.’ He paused for a change in gear. ‘Gemma recognised some trait in Pearle that she was sure came from you. That was why she came to us. That was her conundrum. Do you know what that trait was?’

I thanked the good doctor and said I would be in touch. He wasn’t so keen to see me leave before agreeing to assist in his research, but right now academic discovery was not top of my agenda. A stiff drink was.

I thought about what Venton had told me, particularly the last bit. My obsessive behaviour had actually affected the expression of some of my genes. As I gather,
this
was not so remarkable – it’s an established mechanism. What was interesting, though, was that the genes in question existed at all.

Although, deep down, I think I had known this all along. I was not aware of the mechanism, but I had always felt that through my learning I was reawakening an ancient skill. The fact is that before humans developed spoken language we had communicated for millennia by other means; by body language and facial expressions and scent. I had found the key to turn this skill back on. The pertinent question was why it was ever switched off.