Even masterpieces begin with a rough draft

For the next few weeks, James was incredibly busy. Not only was he working in the lab, he spent his off hours going over the files of what Henry and his team had previously tried. The genome they were working with was far from complete, but rather than wait for more samples and painstakingly piece it together, Henry had chosen to try to fill the gaps with modern DNA from a species on the taxonomic tree. This was something that Dr. Sorkin frequently expressed her frustrations over. James could see both sides. While sequencing the full genome would allow for them to clone a true to life dinosaur, it was also cost prohibitive and time consuming.

Whereas using filler DNA would create something with obvious flaws, it could still be used as a starting point to allow them to get an idea of the dinosaur’s needs and possible behavior. However, James didn’t see why both methods couldn’t be used. Start off with the dinosaurs using filler DNA and as the genome was progressively sequenced, each subsequent ‘generation’ could be truer to the real deal. It was an idea he planned on voicing to Henry, at some point, because they were still having issues with the organism self-terminating. However, with each attempt, the mass of cells was living longer and longer.

Owing to his virology work, James was the lucky bastard who got to inject the frog ovum with the modified DNA. The frog ovum wasn’t going to be the permanent means of incubating the future dinosaurs, they had a number of unfertilized avian eggs to use for that, but the frog ovum allowed them to easily watch the developing mass of cells to pinpoint where things went wrong. Carefully, he pulled the needle out and poked a button to apply a small electric jolt to jump start the cell division. “Batch G-059 is a go.”

After carefully putting a lid on the petri dish, he passed it over to his coworker who took it over to the incubator slash camera. As it turned out, the light that shined up was just the perfect temperature to incubate the frog ovum. After a moment, a live feed of 10 petri dishes with frog ova appeared on the projector screen. Five were with the usual DNA they’d been using, inserted at different points while the other five housed new DNA at the same points. Sighing quietly, James pulled off his gloves and glanced over at Henry. “I think we’re getting close. The last one survived nearly six hours before it terminated during the third cleavage.”

“I hope you’re right. I almost feel we’ve spent more time picking apart the genome of living animals than we have prehistoric ones.” Henry replied, his eyes locked on the projector screen as he waited for the first cell division. It wouldn’t be for another three and a half hours, but he’d reached the point that he felt that if he stared at it long enough, nothing would go wrong.

“It’s not time wasted. By having those genomes sequenced, we’ll be able to move faster when we are successful and move on to other dinosaur species. The first step is always the hardest.” James couldn’t help but feel optimistic about this alteration. They’d switched from Struthio camelus DNA to Hyperolius viridiflavus DNA. While the common ostrich was likely closer on the taxonomic tree than the common reed frog, it had become painfully clear that the avian DNA was a massive flop.

“Yes, you’re right.” Henry sighed as he briefly glanced at his watch in order to have an idea of when the ova should be showing signs of developing. “I’m simply…Frustrated. We’ve made steps forward, but they’re stumbled baby steps.”

“Such is the way of science, Henry. Just watch, one of us will cock up and that’ll be the thing that solves our issues.” He grinned slightly at the laugh he got from the other man.

The three hours dragged on, and a subtle tension settled in the lab as everyone watched the projector, waiting for the clock to hit three and a half hours. Like clockwork, the ova divided: all five of the ova with frog DNA neatly split into two while only three of the ostrich spliced ova split. From behind James, someone quietly whispered ‘oh my God’.

“…Who’s going home tonight?” Henry asked, softly, as he finally tore his eyes away from the projector to look at the people around him.

No one spoke up.

“Noted. Okay. We have an hour before the next divide. Cathy, go radio the cantina, tell them to dish up meals for everyone here and I want you to go get it.” After getting a confirmation, he shifted his attention to the rest of his coworkers. “This is promising and we might just have a new record, tonight.”

“Henry, when do you consider it a success and when do you want us to terminate the eggs?”

“Let them develop. The frog ova will self-limit the number of cells that can develop and either the cells will terminate on their own, or the ova will burst. I’d rather see the latter happen.” Henry gave a faint nod to Cathy as she ducked out of the lab.

Slowly, the hours ticked by with the muted excitement steadily growing. By the 5th cleavage, 7 hours and 32 cells later, all of the ova with ostrich DNA had self-terminated while only one of the frog DNA ova had self-terminated. It was nearly 26 hours later when the membrane of the four remaining ova finally ruptured, resulting in tired, but excited cheers.

Henry leaned forward from where he’d perched on a stool, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee whose contents had long since cooled. “Radio the mainland and tell them to call John. I want them to tell him: we popped the frog egg.”

The next two weeks were a flurry of activity as the lab worked to bring the incubators online and waited for the go ahead from John. While the incubators were supposed to come up to the set temperature and humidity within a few hours, Henry was nothing short of a perfectionist and wanted several days of monitoring. This was a trait that James deeply admired. Besides, it gave them all something to do while they waited for the green light.

When they finally got the go ahead, the lab was filled to the brim with contagious excitement. Now that they had a potentially viable genome, they needed to figure out the correct incubation temperature, humidity, and length of incubation. Thankfully, the last need would largely be something that would happen on its own.

Carefully, James pipped open the ostrich egg and injected the altered DNA before tapping the button to provide the electric jolt. Then, he quietly sighed in relief that it was done. The first egg had been beyond stressful because everyone in the lab had crowded around him. While confident in his abilities, he’d been half afraid that he’d do something to completely mess everything up, but it had all gone well, thankfully. After passing off the egg, he watched it get carried to the incubator, to join the other four eggs, before looking to Henry. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

Henry could only shrug. “I don’t know. I’ll put up a white board, tomorrow, and people can write down their guesses. Person who’s the closest gets 50 to spend the next time they go to the mainland. Personally, I think it’ll be close to an ostrich’s incubation time of a month and a half.”

They had four incubators total, each with five eggs to total 20 eggs. Each incubator had been set at a slightly different temperature and with a humidity level of 30% in order to find the optimal temperature. Later tests could check for optimal humidity, but all the values they were using were standard for ostrich eggs.

At that point, it was a waiting game and the lab shifted their energy towards sequencing another dinosaur, Parasaurolophus. With the tentative success with the common reed frog DNA, the plan was to use that to patch up the missing sequences. It gave them something to do and was more productive than waiting on eggs that might possibly never hatch.

However, as the weeks passed, excitement and hope grew. While all but two of eggs at the higher temperature had terminated early on and one of the eggs at the lower temperature had too, all the eggs at the mid-range temperature were steadily growing. Candling and weights taken had proven this, so they knew whatever was inside was growing, but there was a subtle worry that it’d come out deformed or only live for a handful of minutes after hatching.

On the 47th day of incubation, one of the eggs from the mid-temperature clutch chirped. Immediately, the lab finished what they were doing and waited with a palatable tension. One by one, each of the eggs began to periodically chirp softly. The two high-range eggs were the first to hatch on the 48th day. One of them managed to crack the shell before it passed; its sibling never attempted. A quick egg autopsy revealed a perfectly formed dinosaur in the egg that cracked, but the one that didn’t attempt housed a strange creature that looked to be more frog than dinosaur.

The low-range clutch didn’t fare much better and the three that hatched were all universally weak. They all passed within an hour of hatching. This left the mid-range clutch and James sorely hoped that they’d make it. So much time and effort had been put into these twenty eggs, just to see them all die was beyond demoralizing.

It was on the 50th day that the mid-range clutch began to hatch. The creatures inside chirped loudly and the eggs wiggled as they fought to free themselves; the lab watched and collectively held their breathes. Quite suddenly, the egg in the middle of the clutch popped open, and a dinosaur tumbled out. It was dark green with light green spots and had bluish colored eyes that had already started to look muddy. After a moment of lying there, it shakily raised its head and looked around before loudly protesting the current state of affairs.

On June 12th, 1986 at 1:34 pm, the world’s first cloned dinosaur hatched.