Chapter 2276 - 1473: Circle_2

Chapter 2276: Chapter 1473: Circle_2

"The development program goes from A to Z, while the repair program goes from Z to A. These two paths are essentially the same road. Repairing doesn’t require redesigning the blueprint; you just need to reverse it. Each crucial node in the repair program can find its corresponding mirror image in the development program. Knowing development means knowing repair. Knowing one means knowing the other."

For a few seconds, the room was quiet.

Weber was the first to speak: "Among the 563 nodes I’ve found in the repair program map, over 400 are expressed at different stages of embryonic development. After folding the timeline, I noticed that their order of appearance in development and their activation order in repair are indeed reversed." He paused, "I originally thought this was a coincidence. Now it seems it isn’t."

"It’s not a coincidence," Chen Xiao said.

No one spoke in the meeting room, but the silence in the air felt different from before. If one had to describe it with a word, perhaps it would be "through"—like a pipe that had been blocked for a long time was finally cleared, allowing water to flow through.

Tang Shun spoke up: "If development and repair truly are the forward and backward directions on the same path, then what can we do?"

Yang Ping turned away from the whiteboard and faced everyone.

"A lot can be done. Firstly, we can systematically predict every step of the repair program based on embryonic development data, no longer needing to explore blindly step by step. Secondly, we can find the switches for the repair program based on the switches of the development program. When the development program starts and stops, these signals exist as mirrors in the repair program. Finding the switch for development means finding the switch for repair. Thirdly, we can use small molecule regulators for development to regulate repair. The market already has a large number of drugs targeting crucial signaling pathways in embryonic development. These drugs were originally designed to treat development-related diseases like birth defects and genetic disorders. If repair and development share the same signal pathways, then these old drugs will have new uses—to activate or inhibit the repair program."

The meeting lasted nearly three hours. When everyone gradually left the meeting room, Tang Shun stayed until the last. He closed his laptop and glanced at Yang Ping.

"Professor, several completely different directions, at completely different times, using completely different methods, answered completely different scientific questions. But the final answer pointed to the same direction. This isn’t a coincidence; this is the thing we’ve been searching for all along."

Yang Ping didn’t respond. He stood in front of the whiteboard, gazing at the folded diagram Chen Xiao had drawn, for a long time. Then he picked up the whiteboard eraser and wiped off the diagram. Tang Shun paused for a moment but did not ask. Yang Ping turned around and placed the eraser back on its stand.

"Erased because it’s finished. What has been understood doesn’t need to be kept anymore. Let’s go, eat."

After eating, Chen Xiao invited Yang Ping alone to the meeting room. He took out a laptop from his bag, opened it, and turned the screen toward Yang Ping.

The screen displayed a diagram—a network chart almost as complex as the repair program map. But looking closely, the colors were different, the annotations were different, and the connections’ directions were different.

Chen Xiao said, "This is the gene regulatory network for embryonic development, extracted from years of data. Over 500 nodes, more than 2000 connections. I placed this diagram beside the Weberman Einstein repair program map for comparison. The overlap exceeds 80%. The remaining 20% isn’t non-overlapping; it’s a direction difference. In the development network, an arrow pointing toward a node is, in the repair network, an arrow pointing from that node to other nodes. Opposite direction, identical structure."

He clicked the screen, and the two diagrams overlaid each other. The overlapping parts turned dark blue. The dark blue area covered most of the diagram, leaving only some scattered regions at the edges in light gray.

"85%, the overlap between the development and repair networks is 85%. The remaining 15% should be within experimental error range, or the data standards between Weber and me aren’t entirely consistent. If we conduct another round of validation, the overlap should reach over 90%."

Yang Ping stood in the empty meeting room, facing the laptop, the screen showed an overlapped network diagram.

"I want to conduct an experiment," Chen Xiao said, "specifically knocking out key nodes in the development network in embryos, to see if the corresponding nodes in the adult repair program’s expression are affected."

"Very good idea!"

"Prove that the development program and repair program not only share the same structure but that the same set of genes fulfills corresponding functions during development and repair phases. It’s not about genes controlling development during development and controlling repair during repair. It’s the same set of genes doing different things at different times. Doing A during development, doing reverse A during repair."

"How long will this experiment take?"

"A year."

"No, half a year!"

"Then give you three months."

"Three months, just three months, I only need three months."

Yang Ping said, "Okay, whatever resources you need, I’ll fully provide—cells, animals, sequencing, bioinformatics analysis. Whatever you need, just ask."

Chen Xiao nodded, full of confidence.

Yang Ping left the meeting room and went directly to Weber’s laboratory. Weber was operating at the workstation and didn’t stop his actions when he saw Yang Ping enter.

"Chen Xiao came to find you?"

"Just came back from him."

"What did he say?"

"He said the overlap between the development network and repair network exceeds 85%."

Weber’s pipette paused, "85%? My own data... When I was mapping the repair program, I also tried comparing it with known development data but didn’t reverse the timeline." Weber put down the pipette and turned around, "I always thought the repair program was a condensed version, a simplified version of the development program. That sentence just now made me consider another possibility. Maybe it isn’t a condensed or simplified version; it’s the same program played backward."

Yang Ping walked to the experiment table, pulled out a chair to sit down, picked up the pen on Weber’s desk, and drew a line on a sticky note. He wrote two words on either end of the line: "development" on one end and "repair" on the other. Then he drew a curve between these two words instead of a straight line.

"Chen Xiao said this is a straight road, forward and backward directions, but now I believe it might not be a straight road; it’s a circle. Development goes from A to B to C to D, then it doesn’t stop after D—it continues forward, loops around from D to C to B to A, and returns to the starting point. It’s not forward and backward directions; it’s the same direction, the same pathway. It just looks like going back to the original place during the second half loop, but with a different height."

Weber looked at the curve Yang Ping drew for a long time without speaking.

"Professor," Weber finally opened his mouth, "this circle you mentioned, if the starting and ending points are connected, development and repair become a closed loop. Development is the first half; repair is the second half. Once the first half is done, the second half begins. The first half is construction, the second half is maintenance."

Yang Ping tore off the sticky note, folded it, and placed it in his pocket, "If this circle truly exists, then we can not only repair damage but also decelerate aging. The essence of aging is the gradual failure of the maintenance program. If the maintenance program can be reactivated, theoretically, it can allow the human body to maintain a stable state for a longer time."

He walked out of the lab, and the door closed automatically behind him. The corridor was quiet, with afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, casting bright squares on the floor. Yang Ping walked along the corridor back to his office, opened the door, sat at his desk, opened the drawer, took out the old experiment record book inside, flipped to the latest page, wrote today’s date, and then wrote two lines. The first line was: "Development and repair share the same genetic network." The second line was: "Development is construction, repair is maintenance. Construction + Maintenance = Steady State."

He closed the notebook, leaned back against the chair, and closed his eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the window, falling warmly on his face.