The Scientist (Loki x OC)

Pt. 23: Sammy

Though earlier than usual, Luna popped into work with a fresh spring in her step, full of hope in regards to how her experiment would go.

"Good morning, Ms. Fields," FRIDAY greeted as Luna slipped on her lab coat.

"Hello, FRIDAY. Any messages for me?"

"You have one from Mr. Stark."

"Fantastic." Luna snapped on a rubber glove. "Can you tell me what it says?"

"He has approved your personal use of the greenhouse, and a reserved spot will be available for you within the week."

"Awesome! Thank you." With fresh paper towels in one hand and a bottle of cleaner in the other, she cleaned every available bench space. The next phase of her experiment was inbound.

Throughout the last few days, her population of C. elegans embryos had shown signs of proper development and growth. Ergo, all the available eggs had formed and hatched as expected, as did the larvae as they grew into strong egg-laying adults. This indicated the next step of her experiment could take place. Though, over those days of watching and waiting, Luna did not sit idly by and watch the larvae grow. No, not at all. She had taken it upon herself to design a guide RNA to aid in editing the genome of a single worm and watching how it grew with its new DNA. The new DNA in question would be the one isolated from Loki along with a green fluorescent tag.

She worked diligently, and for long hours, up until the moment Loki might have begun to worry. On one such night she had come home later than expected, he inquired on what had taken her so long. 'My experiment took longer to finish than I thought and I couldn't leave it before I was done,' she had answered him, and he had accepted it. He knew enough of her work to not grill her further.

Identifying the position to insert the alien sequence was tough. She needed to be as precise as she could be or it could cause a cascade of failures, maybe resulting in the death of her embryo. She was willing to do anything to prevent such a thing from happening. In the end, she was able to make the RNA an exact match to the DNA in the cell line she had cultivated by matching the base pairs of Loki's DNA to that of a human's, and then back to that of her desired C. elegans cell line. Her hard work paid off, little by little and hour by hour.

The target sequence and motif were set alongside the guide RNA, all paired with the proper Cas9 protein. Its role was to act like scissors to the double-stranded target DNA and allow the integration of the foreign – or in this case, alien – sequence.  It was scary and new, but she was excited. She needed to hang onto the feeling and ride it out to the end.

Within the Petri dish, Luna found a newly laid egg, still in the early stages of cell division. From the microscope, it looked like a little grey blob inside of a grey ring. Though unappealing to her colleagues, it was the most beautiful thing in the world to her.

Carefully, she picked it up from the nutrient media on which it sat to grow and placed in on a microscope slide. A micromanipulator on one side of the cell to hold in place and the tip of the microinjector in view on the other side.

"I'm gonna call you Sammy. Ok, little one?" Luna muttered to the egg. She was attached now. No turning back. She took a deep breath.

With steady hands, she slowly punctured the soft eggshell and microinjected the CRISPR components into the developing embryo. She held her breath until the microscopic glass pipette was out of the cell and everything remained intact. Another look-over and back into a fresh Petri dish he went. One crucial step down, many more to go.

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Luna returned from an afternoon restroom break and snapped on a fresh pair of rubber gloves.