Molecular Biology and the New Testament
codes and splits and despair and and and
A few months ago I was handed one of those pocket bibles that you see old people passing out on college campuses; I always take one because ultimately I am a pushover and I hate to disappoint people. Because of its small size, I keep it tucked in a side pocket in my backpack, and read it on my commute when I have forgotten to bring anything else. I placed green tape over the cover so I can look at it in public with a minimum of surreptitious feeling.
I had been wanting to read the Book of Revelation anyway; Christian apocalyptic thought is very compelling, and I doubt there has been a better time to study it. This is partially because of my climate despair, and partially because I think the expectation of the rapture drives a small but powerful sector of the American right-wing today. It has made for interesting reading. I feel no closer or further away from the Christian faith. I find the reportage of the Gospels questionable.
The idea that science and religion are incompatible is an old one, and I can’t tell how persistent it is today. Developments in research and medicine seem to have left no room for spiritual mystery in our lives, with the possible exception of dreams. I think that this is okay, I have no interest in ascribing the outcome of my affairs to a higher power. I want accountability for my life to fall to only me.
Perhaps this standpoint is the product a lifelong bias; I have spent so much time sequestered in labs and classrooms studying things still maybe considered to be antithetical to religion. In high school we watched videos of planaria being cut in two with a razor on a block of ice. Each frozen half, we were told, would grow back into a full adult, genetically identical to the original. Split-brain patients have been known to have their two hands, each controlled by a separate brain hemisphere, disagree when choosing clothing for the day. Proteolysis is when a protein is cleaved in two by a reaction with water, the so-called miracle molecule, the universal solvent. A theory goes that the universe splits each time a decision is made, creating infinite multiverses of every conceivable outcome.
There’s much splitting in Revelation, as well. Apocalypse is of course supposed to be obliterative, but only with the promise of a better, purer firmament to take the place of our fallen world. The negative is expected to be overtaken by the generative. It’s the same in molecular biology; we alter and mutilate with the belief that the outcome will be something better than before. Studying anything esoteric you are reduced to codes, non-words and numbers. Sox6 and DARPP-32 and Ephesians 4:26.
I work inside a large academic complex that encompasses a hospital, a medical school, and numerous research buildings. The pocket bible was handed to me outside a building that was breathlessly announced as “the largest biomedical academic research facility in the U.S.” The placement was no doubt intentional, and it was effective as far as it makes me think about God at work. (Is science, as Chomsky said, just another tool held by the strong arm of ideology? Another question completely, but one that still worries me.)
The work in question is with mutant mice. These mice carry subtle, expensive genetic modifications stitched into their DNA via CRISPR and careful breeding. These modifications are mostly to selectively target neurons that carry specific genes and proteins, often marking them with a green fluorescent glow.
I am entering my third year of working in rodent labs and I have seen many things that have exalted and dismayed me. I have seen the neurons of a live animal fire in real-time through an implanted microscope, and it felt like witnessing a miracle. I have seen a lesioned mouse refuse to eat or drink, only running around and around in counterclockwise circles. I have seen brain cells glow in every color. I have seen mice eat their young.
Sometimes I hold these mice in my gloved hands, contemplating how human will has unzipped their DNA to make their brains glow green in the dark, and I think of Psalm 139. It is ostensibly a song of gratitude, but could also sound like an accusation. After all, none of us asked to exist.
