Altar of Eden by James Rollins Read Free Book Online Page B

professional interest.
    As the isolation door clicked shut, her boss was already halfway down the hall, moving with long, purposeful strides. He had been speaking, but she caught only the last bit.
    “ . . . and we’ve already started PCR tests to begin amplifying the key chromosomes. But, of course, DNA sequencing will take most of the night.”
    She hurried to close the distance with Carlton—both physically and mentally. Together they headed down another hallway and reached the double doors to the suite of genetic labs that occupied this wing of the ACRES facility.
    The main lab was long and narrow, lined on both sides by bio-hazard hoods and workstations. The latest genetic equipment filled shelves and tables: centrifuges, microscopes, incubators, electrophoresis equipment, a digital camera system for visualizing DNA, and racks of pipettes, glassware, scales, vials of enzymes and PCR chemicals.
    Carlton led the way to where two researchers—a man and a woman—were crouched before a computer monitor. The pair stood so close together, both wearing white lab coats. They reminded Lorna of the conjoined monkeys, bonded at the hip just like Huey and Dewey.
    “This is amazing,” Dr. Paul Trent announced and glanced over a shoulder as she reached them. He was young, thinly built, with wavy blond hair combed behind his ears, looking more like a California surfer than a leading neurobiologist.
    Paul’s wife, Zoë, stood next to him. She was Hispanic. Her black hair was bobbed short—shorter than her husband’s—framing wide cheekbones, lightly freckled. Her lab coat did little to hide the generously curved body beneath.
    The two were biologists from Stanford, wunderkinds in the field, earning their degrees before their mid-twenties and already well regarded professionally. They were in New Orleans on a two-year grant researching neural development in cloned animals, studying the structural differences between the brains of cloned specimens and their original subjects.
    The pair of doctors certainly had come to the right place.
    ACRES was one of the nation’s leading facilities involved with cloning. In 2003, they had been the first to clone a wild carnivore, an African cat named Ditteaux, pronounced Ditto for obvious reasons. And in the coming year, the facility was about to begin the commercial cloning of pets as a method to raise funds for their work with endangered species.
    Zoë stepped back from the computer monitor. “Lorna, you have to see this.”
    Lorna moved closer and recognized a karyogram on the screen. It showed a set of numbered chromosomes lined up into a chart.

    Karyograms were built by using a chemical to trap cell division in its metaphase stage. The chromosomes were then separated, dyed, and sequenced via digital imaging into a numbered karyogram. Humans carried forty-six chromosomes, divided into twenty-three pairs. The monitor showed twenty-eight pairs.
    Definitely not human.
    Carlton explained, “We built this karyogram from a white blood cell from one of the capuchin monkeys.”
    From the general excitement, Lorna knew there remained another shoe to drop.
    Paul spoke up, his voice was full of wonder. “Capuchins normally have a complement of twenty-seven pairs of chromosomes.”
    Lorna stared at the karyogram on the screen. “But there’s twenty- eight here.”
    “Exactly!” Zoë said.
    Lorna turned to the facility’s director. “Carlton, you said you still wanted to repeat the test. Surely this is a lab error.”
    “It’s under way, but I suspect we’ll confirm the original findings here.” He nodded to the computer.
    “Why’s that?”
    Carlton leaned forward, grabbed the computer mouse, and toggled through another five genetic maps. “This next karyogram is from the conjoined twin of the first monkey. Again twenty-eight chromosomal pairs. Same as the first. The next studies are from the lamb, the jaguar cub, the parrot, and this last is from the Burmese python.”
    The