The plane turned for its final descent into Ronald Reagan Airport. Soon he would be back in the wasteland of his current life. Back in the swamp.
Back in Leo’s lab, they got busy running trials of Pierzinski’s algorithm, while continuing the ongoing experiments in “rapid hydrodynamic insertion,” as it was now called in the emerging literature. Many labs were working on the delivery problem and, crazy as it seemed, this was one of the more promising methods being investigated. A bad sign.
Thus they were so busy on both fronts that they didn’t notice at first the results that one of Marta’s collaborators was getting with Pierzinski’s method. Marta had done her Ph.D. studying the microbiology of certain algae, and she was still coauthoring papers with a postdoc named Eleanor Dufours. Leo had met Eleanor, and then read her papers, and been impressed. Now Marta had introduced Eleanor to a version of Pierzinski’s algorithm, and things were going well, Marta said. Leo thought his group might be able to learn some things from their work, so he set up a little brown-bag lunch for Eleanor to give a talk.
“What we’ve been looking into,” Eleanor said that day in her quiet steady voice, very unlike Marta’s, “is the algae in certain lichens. DNA histories are making it clear that some lichens are really ancient partnerships of algae and fungus, and we’ve been genetically altering the algae in one of the oldest, Cornicularia cornuta. It grows on trees, and works its way into the trees to a quite surprising degree. We think the lichen is helping the trees it colonizes by taking over the tree’s hormone regulation and increasing the tree’s ability to absorb lignins through the growing season.”
She talked about the possibility of changing their metabolic rates. “Lately we’ve been trying these algorithms Marta brought over, trying to find algal symbionts that speed the lichen’s ability to add lignin to the trees.”
Engineering evolution, Leo thought. His lab was trying to do similar things, of course, but he seldom thought of it that way. He needed to get this outside view to defamiliarize what he did, to see better what was going on.
“Why speed up lignin banking?” Brian wanted to know. “I mean, what use would it be?”
“We’ve been thinking it might work as a carbon sink.”
“How so?”
“Well, you know, people are talking about capturing and sequestering some of the carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere, in carbon sinks of one kind or other. But no method has looked really good yet. Stimulating plant growth has been one suggestion, but the problem is that most of the plants discussed have been very short-lived, and rotting plant life quickly releases its captured CO2 back into the atmosphere. So unless you can arrange lots of very deep peat bogs, capturing CO2 in small plants hasn’t looked very effective.”
Her listeners nodded.
“So, the thing is, living trees have had hundreds of millions of years of practice in not being eaten and outgassed by bugs. So one possibility would be to grow bigger trees. That turns out not to be so easy,” and she sketched a ground and a tree growing out of it on the whiteboard, with a red marker so that it looked like something a five-year-old would draw. “Sorry. See, most trees are already as tall as they can get, because of physical constraints like soil qualities and wind speeds. So, you can make them thicker, or”—drawing more roots under the ground line—“you can make the roots thicker. But trying to do that directly involves genetic changes that harm the trees in other ways, and anyway is usually very slow.”
“So it won’t work,” Brian said.
“Right,” she said patiently, “but many trees host these lichen, and the lichen regulate lignin production in a way that might be bumped, so the tree would quite quickly capture carbon that would remain sequestered for as long as the tree lived.
“So, given all this, what we’ve been working on is a kind of altered tree lichen. The lichen’s photosynthesis is accomplished by the algae in it, and we’ve been using this algorithm of Yann’s to find genes that can be altered to accelerate that. And now we’re getting the lichen to export the excess sugar into its host tree, down in the roots. It seems like we might be able to really accelerate the root growth and girth of the trees that these lichens grow on.”
“Capturing like how much carbon?”
“Well, we’ve calculated different scenarios, with the altered lichen being introduced into forests of different sizes, all the way up to the whole world’s temperate forest belt. That one has the amount of CO2 that would be drawn down in the billions of tons.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. And pretty quickly, too.”
“Watch out,” Brian joked, “you don’t want to be causing an ice age here.”
“True. But that would be a problem that came later. And we know how to warm things up, after all. But at this point any carbon capture would be good. There are some really bad effects coming down the pike these days, as you know.”
They all sat and stared at the mess of letters and lines and little tree drawings she had scribbled on the whiteboard.
Leo broke the silence. “Wow, Eleanor. That’s very interesting.”
“I know it doesn’t help you with your delivery problem.”
“No, but that’s okay, that isn’t what you do. This is still very interesting. It’s a different problem is all, but that happens. This is great stuff. Have you shown this to the chancellor yet?”
“No.” She looked surprised.
“You should. He loves stuff like this, and, you know, he’s a working scientist himself. He still keeps his lab going even while he’s doing all the chancellor stuff.”
Now Eleanor was nodding. “I’ll do that. He has been very supportive.”
“Right. And look, I hope you and Marta keep collaborating. Maybe there’s some aspect of hormone regulation you’ll spot that we’re not seeing.”
“I doubt that, but thanks.”
Soon after that, Leo got an e-mail from Derek, asking him to join a meeting with a representative of a venture capital group. This had happened a few times back when Torrey Pines was a hot new start-up, so Leo knew the drill, and was therefore extremely uncomfortable with the idea of doing it again—especially if it came to a discussion of “rapid hydrodynamic insertion.” No way did Leo want to be supporting Derek’s unfounded assertions to an outsider.
Derek assured him that he would handle any of this guy’s “speculative questions”—exactly the sort of questions a venture capitalist would have to ask.
“And so I’ll be there to …”
“You’ll be there to answer any technical questions about the method.”
Great.
Before the meeting Leo was shown a copy of the executive summary and offering memorandum Derek had sent to Biocal, a venture capital firm from which Derek had gotten an investment in the company’s early years. This document was very upbeat about the possibilities of the hydrodynamic delivery method. On finishing it Leo’s stomach had contracted to the size of a walnut.
The meeting was in Biocal’s offices, located in an upscale building in downtown La Jolla, just off Prospect near the point. Their meeting room windows had a great view up the coast. Leo could almost spot their own building, on the cliff across La Jolla Cove.
Their host, Henry Bannet, was a trim man in his forties, relaxed and athletic-looking, friendly in the usual San Diego manner. His firm was a private partnership, doing strategic investing in biotechnologies. A billion-dollar fund, Derek had said. And they didn’t expect any return on their investments