Biogenesis by Tatsuaki Ishiguro Read Free Book Online

of this, and examining Dr. Akedera’s journal retrospectively, we see that it was only a few days before the mice’s demise that he began speculating about their lifespan.
    What is more, he speculated that the markings on Ponta’s and Ai’s wings indicated a difference of more than two hundred years, arithmetically speaking. Of course, this did not establish that a winged mouse had a lifespan of more than two hundred years. In the case of Ponta, if the center of the vortex really marked the beginning of his life, it put his age at more than five hundred years. This postulate, however, has no other basis than an orally transmitted report of the capture, during World War II, of a tiny winged mouse with the shortest of markings. As that mouse also died within two years, it would seem to be an utterly vague basis.
    The paper includes a fact that never shows up in the experiment logs and that Mr. Miura was unaware of. Although I have already noted how successive generations of the winged mouse’s skincells failed to culture, when tissue fragment was re-deposited whole without reducing it to cells, any that grew out and divided died, but those that stayed within the fragment continued to survive without dividing. This was considered evidence on a cellular level of the longevity of winged mice.
    Furthermore, single cells isolated and observed using a limited dilution method divided into two cells and suffered cell death after a certain period. The paper also notes, interestingly, that if the cells were separated soon after dividing, they stayed alive as long as the procedure was repeated.
    Given that it was possible to culture a tissue fragment (in which cells remained together and division was halted), Dr. Akedera seemed to think that some signal indispensable for continued survival existed in the nervous system. He speculated that once the signal was interrupted and altered by cell division, etc., it was recognized as a death signal, necessitating single-cell culturing beyond that point.
    “It went against common sense, so I had no idea Dr. Akedera had persisted under such conditions. Thinking back on it, even after the transfers failed, he kept working on some culture, and when he was going back to Tokyo, I saw him place a T-flask filled with culturing medium into a cooler. I don’t know why he concealed these facts from everyone else, though” (Mr. Miura).
    Yet the manuscript, complete with photographs of cells subsisting in tissue fragment in the exact same form at one, six, and twelve months, as well as pictures of the single cells, does not appear to be a work of fiction on Dr. Akedera’s part. Naturally, no other known cells share such properties.
    In the end, after reading Dr. Akedera’s paper, Mr. Miura regretted that the failure to maintain cell lines was “the result of following existing schemes of cellular propagation and survival.”
    Reading through the paper, one surmises that Dr. Akedera came to suspect that winged mice live not just for five hundred years but literally forever.
    In any case, perhaps because he himself remained unconvinced by such an outrageous hypothesis, the paper was never published. Alas, current Species Preservation Center Director Yoshio Inoue, who has been involved in numerous environmental protection initiatives as a lawyer, has declared, “There are no plans for further attempts at culturing as of this date.” Our prospects for settling the issue one way or another are slim.
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    The whole mystery surrounding the winged mice was revealed by Dr. Sakakibara as he stared death in the face. Suffering from an illness of an unknown cause that pervaded his entire nervous system, Dr. Sakakibara lacked the strength to swallow his own saliva, but even as spittle dripped constantly down his chin, and emitting inchoate growls, he attempted communication with the aid of a word processor keyed to his ocular movements.
    Dr. Sakakibara recognized as criminal, and regretteduntil the moment of