NovelsAlex Chapter 1408 Star Chart
Chapter 1408 Star Chart
Chapter 1408 Star Chart
Yang Ping rested on the overpass for a while, and the night breeze, carrying the unique moisture of the South, swept over him.
Now, Einstein's 14% means that people with spinal cord injuries may have a chance to get back on their feet, not through exoskeletons or brain-computer interfaces, but by reconnecting and working through their own bodies, their own cells, and their own nervous system.
My phone vibrated; it was another message from Mannstein: "I plan to submit a paper to *Nature Medicine*, and your name is included in the acknowledgments. Professor, would you agree to use the name 'Yang-Mannstein Spinal Cord Progenitor Cell Repair'?"
Yang Ping looked at the screen, a smile unconsciously creeping onto his face. The right to name a theory is an ancient honor, but also a responsibility, in the scientific community. Once a theory is named, it transcends its founder, becoming part of public knowledge, subject to citation, questioning, revision, and even surpassing. He replied, "Just use 'Mannstein's spinal cord progenitor cell repair,' my name is unimportant."
Mannstein responded quickly: "Your name must be added. Without your theory, I would not have made the breakthrough. 'Yang-Mannstein' is not an honor, it is a fact."
Yang Ping stopped arguing. He agreed with Einstein, whose theory was based on Yang Ping's. There was no point in refusing any further. The fact that he named the book after himself was sufficient.
"Professor, I'm sorry, I need to come to China to meet with you. I always feel that face-to-face communication is the best way to discuss some things."
"Okay, come here."
"Thank you. I know I'm bothering you, and you're very busy right now, but I couldn't contain my excitement, so I had to come."
Three days later, Mainstein flew to Nandu.
He brought no assistants, made no contact with the media, and carried only a small suitcase and a printed experimental plan. Yang Ping sent Tang Shun to pick him up at the airport. The two barely spoke when they met in the office. Mainstein looked exhausted, but there was something burning in his eyes. Yang Ping recognized that look—the excitement of someone who had been troubled by a problem for a long time and suddenly saw a way out.
As he spoke, Manstein pulled out his documents: "I am now preparing to conduct primate experiments. Previously, I used mice for experiments, and I plan to use primates to increase the percentage from 14% to 50%."
Yang Ping took the folder, but didn't open it. He said, "Are you sure you want to move this fast? 14% to 50% isn't linear growth; there might be a plateau, and there might be obstacles we haven't anticipated."
“I know,” Mainstein said, “but I’m fifty-seven, Professor, and I’ve been stuck on a problem for fifteen years. Now that I finally see a way out, I don’t want to wait any longer. And…” He paused, “and I have a feeling this window won’t stay open forever. There have been many such moments in the history of science, where a field suddenly becomes cultivable, everyone rushes in, the first to break through defines the rules, and those who follow can only follow. I want to be the one who defines the rules, not for fame, but to ensure we’re on the right track.”
Yang Ping turned his head and looked at the man who was nearly twenty years older than him. Mainstein's hair was already gray and there were deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but when he spoke these words, his expression was like that of a young man, with a kind of naive, almost stubborn eagerness.
“Your theory,” Mainstein continued, “is not just about spinal cord injury. I’ve been thinking, if cell regeneration and positional sense can be restored by regulating gene expression, then what about other degenerative diseases? Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, even aging itself—is it the same? Migrating progenitor cells to where they are needed, and then replacing them for repair?”
Yang Ping didn't answer. He had pondered this question in countless late nights, during those low-cost trials permitted by the system. Where are the boundaries of the three-dimensional guided gene theory? Is it some kind of more general insight into the principles of life's organization?
“I don’t know,” he finally said, “but we can find the answer together.”
Mannstein smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling together like a child who had received a promise.
Mainstein was very efficient; the experiment began two weeks later.
The ethical review went more smoothly than expected, possibly due to the aura of Mannstein's Nobel Prize, or perhaps because the 14% figure was indeed convincing. His experiments were conducted in one of the best non-human primate laboratories in Europe, equipped with state-of-the-art electrophysiological monitoring equipment and gene-editing tools.
The first batch of experiments used twelve rhesus monkeys, divided into a control group and an experimental group. Mainstein insisted on personally creating the spinal cord injury model, a highly technical surgery that requires inducing controlled, incomplete damage at specific segments. This involves ensuring the damage is severe enough to block function while avoiding complete transection, which would make it impossible to assess the repair effect.
Auguste served as his assistant, and the two worked under the operating lights for six hours without much conversation, only the crisp clinking of instruments and the regular beeping of the monitors. Maninstein would occasionally pause, close his eyes before a crucial step, silently count a few seconds, and then continue. This was an ancient ritual, a habit shared by many old-school surgeons in Europe and America; it was a tacit understanding between man and technology, a reverence for the uncontrollable.
After the surgery, the experimental group received an intervention based on the three-dimensional guided gene theory: within a 48-hour window after injury, the expression of specific genes was precisely regulated to remove inhibitory factors in the microenvironment. The control group received a placebo.
What followed was a long wait. Mainstein stayed in a hotel near the institute and came to the lab every day to observe the animals and assess key indicators of spinal cord function recovery. To make the observations more detailed, he specifically hired a zoology PhD with extensive knowledge of primates as a consultant.
“They can’t speak,” the doctor said, “but their eyes will tell you. When they’re in pain, their eyes squint; when they’re afraid, their pupils dilate; when they’re hopeful…” He paused, “when they’re hopeful, they’ll look at you—not at food, not at a threat, just at you, as if waiting for something.”
Mainstein noted this observation in his notebook, next to which he drew a simple sketch of a monkey's eye. In the eighth week, the first experimental group monkey showed measurable functional improvement. Electrophysiological monitoring revealed regular neural signal transmission beneath the lesion area, although the intensity was only 30% of normal, the direction was correct, and the pattern was normal. The night the data came out, Mainstein drank a bottle of red wine, passed out on the lab sofa, and mumbled some German.
In the twelfth week, the three experimental monkeys regained their ability to urinate independently. This was a crucial milestone, signifying the reconstruction of autonomic neural pathways. Mainstein made a one-hour video call to Yang Ping, rapidly reporting in Chinese, occasionally waving his hands like a conductor leading an orchestra.
In the sixteenth week, the most exciting result appeared: a monkey stood for five seconds with assistance. Its hind legs couldn't yet support its full weight, and its spinal posture control was imperfect, but it did stand up, using its own bones, its own muscles, and its own nervous system. At that moment, everyone in the lab fell silent; only the sound of camera shutters recorded the scene.
August stood behind the observation window, watching the monkey. It was thin, its fur sparse from long years in captivity, but its eyes were bright. It tried to stand again, its forelimbs gripping the cage bars, its hind legs trembling as it strained, then it fell down. It tried again, fell down again. The third time, it succeeded, standing for seven seconds.
“This isn’t 14% anymore,” Mainstein said, his voice hoarse as he walked to August’s side, “this is…”
“This is proof,” August said, “proof that the principle is universal, proof that the window can be opened, proof that ecosystem reconstruction is possible, proof that protocellular repair can be achieved under certain specific conditions!”
“The next step is humanity,” Mainstein said, not inquiring, but stating.
“The next step is more monkeys,” August corrected him. “We need a 50% repair rate, we need reproducibility, we need long-term follow-up data. Then come humans, and the first human volunteers must be patients with complete injury, unresponsive to traditional treatments, and with fully informed consent. We can’t give false hope, Mainstein. 14% to 50% is a scientific breakthrough, but 50% for a human patient might mean still being unable to walk, still unable to care for themselves, still unable to return to their previous life. We have to be honest, we are doctors! You can’t be so impatient.”
Mannstein remained silent for a long time, then he extended his hand and shook hands with August in an old-fashioned, European-style handshake—firm, brief, and carrying the weight of a certain promise.
“Honesty,” he said, “is what the professor insists on most, and it’s what I most need to learn. After the Nobel Prize, I forgot about it. Now, I’m learning it again. Thank you for reminding me. I was too impatient—no, it was excitement—excitement made me lose my rationality.”
Mannstein's experiments continued.
Yang Ping began to devote more time to deepening the theory. If the three-dimensional guided gene mechanism is effective in spinal cord injury, how broad is its applicability? He organized an interdisciplinary discussion group, inviting developmental biologists, stem cell researchers, computational biologists, and even an engineer researching artificial intelligence. They met once a week in the institute's conference room, where the whiteboard was always covered with drawings: gene regulatory network diagrams, mathematical models, algorithm flowcharts, and various colored markers intertwined to form a complex, taking shape map.
The AI engineer offered an interesting analogy. He likened the three-dimensional guidance gene mechanism to a "biological GPS system"—not the kind of navigation that tells you where to go, but rather the kind of positioning that tells you "where you are now." Cells need to know their location to decide what type to differentiate into, which direction to grow in, and which neighbors to connect with. In embryonic development, this GPS system is brand new and highly accurate; in adult tissues, it is partially shut down, and its accuracy decreases; in states of injury or disease, it may malfunction completely, leading to chaotic cellular behavior.
“If we can recalibrate this GPS,” the engineer said, “not just the spinal cord, but any scenario requiring tissue reconstruction could benefit. Skin burns, myocardial ischemia, even…” He paused, “You’ve already successfully cloned muscle, haven’t you? You can clone any organ in the future.”
"That's right. So far, we've only successfully cloned muscle, but my intuition tells me that the value of this theory far exceeds our imagination. All previous biological knowledge has focused on studying the cells themselves, never thinking about studying their location. Now we not only need to study why it is the way it is, but also why it appears there. If this theory continues to be mythologized, indeed, many diseases will be solved."
This idea was too bold, and some disagreements arose in the discussion group.
Yang Ping listened to the debate without commenting. He recalled the sketches he had drawn many years ago. Back then, he was just a resident physician, without a lab, funding, or academic standing; he only had one question and a bunch of wild ideas. Now, that question was becoming a field, and those wild ideas were being tested, expanded, and challenged.
After the discussion group adjourned, he remained alone in the meeting room, staring at the doodles on the whiteboard. For a moment, the lines and symbols seemed to combine to form a star map—not in an astronomical sense, but some ancient map of direction and position. Every migration, every differentiation, every connection of a cell in three-dimensional space was a point on this star map.
He picked up his phone and sent a message to Mainstein: "Fifty percent of the time, we hold an international conference. Not to declare victory, but to invite everyone to verify, to question, and to draw this map together."
Mainstein's reply was simple: "Okay! But I need to sleep for three days first. The monkeys finally let me go home tonight."
Yang Ping smiled, turned off the conference room lights, and the motion-activated lights in the corridor turned on one by one with his footsteps, then turned off one by one behind him. This rhythm reminded him of a heartbeat, the waveforms on an electrophysiological monitor, and the most basic, continuous pulses of life.
At the institute's main gate, he stopped and looked up at the sky. There were stars tonight, not many, but clear, stubbornly twinkling amidst the city's light pollution. He remembered Mainstein's words in the voice message: "The only thing that got me out of that dead end."
Science does need flashes of inspiration, but before those flashes come countless days of going around in circles in dead ends. It is those days that make those flashes of inspiration meaningful.
Yang Ping stepped out the door and into the night. Tomorrow, Mainstein will continue observing his monkeys, and the discussion group will continue debating those bold ideas.
14% is just the beginning, but every beginning has been someone's end point and someone else's starting point.