Can you find love during the outbreak of a pandemic?
Maggie is a brilliant, upcoming, and socially awkward scientist. After being recruited for a research team that is developing a COVID-19 vaccine, she unexpectedly finds love at the worst possible...
"RNA is three-dimensional... How to resequence... need to contort the chain.. rebuild those ribose sugars... attack the nitrogenous bases..." I mumbled to my lunch sandwich.
"Maggie," Paul said gently across the table from me. "I realize you're probably not there, but you're talking gibberish to your sandwich again."
"I am?" My eyes lifted to his and he nodded nonchalantly. "I'm sorry. How... How are you?"
"Look, I realize I'm not supposed to know, but you're working on COVID-19, aren't you? Blink once for yes, twice for no." I didn't like the teasing look in his eye.
"I'm serious."
"Look," he said casually, "If you want to resequence RNA then why not just use Moderna's messenger-RNA technology? We have it on our floor, you know the mail-pushers."
"Moderna's..." I dropped my sandwich right onto the table. I was fairly certain that anything still in my mouth would've fallen out as well. "Why didn't I think of that? You are a genius Paul."
"Go, he's still in the office." He chuckled as I stood up and sprinted down the hallway to the elevator. I didn't mind the surprised expressions, just hurried as fast as my feet carried me.
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"So... if I understand, Dr. Henry..." I asked Paul's supervisor as my fingers tapped absently against my chin. "If I give you the antigens, then you can make the proteins? Any proteins?"
He nodded. "It's essentially like playing a large game of Jenga, but we can decide whether or not to stabilize, or in the case of vaccines against RNA, destabilize the ribose sugar, the nitrogenous bases, or both. The resulting proteins will attack the RNA's nucleoproteins."
That actually didn't help.
I had no idea what Jenga was.
"It's quite brilliant, if you think about it." He leaned back in his office chair and studied me curiously. "You get me the antigens, I'll destabilize the RNA. We'll run as many combinations that we can calculate."
"Thank you." I stood up from my chair, then hopped back and forth on my feet in anticipation. I hadn't felt this encouraged and excited in two weeks. "I will work all night, get as many as I can."
"Good luck," he smiled in amusement at my excitement. I couldn't believe how simple the concepts were, and literally skipped down the hallway back to the elevator. My heart raced in my chest. I'd never been so excited to pull an all-nighter.
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