Chapter 2279 - 1475: Facing the World Ahead

Chapter 2279: Chapter 1475: Facing the World Ahead

When Yang Ping stood on that podium again, the audience was several times larger than the last time.

The last time was in the small meeting room of the Institute, facing his own team of more than a hundred people, packed to the brim.

This time, the conference was held in the large meeting room of Sanbo Hospital. On stage sat the host and simultaneous interpreter, and in the audience were over two thousand scholars from forty-seven countries. Additionally, more viewers were watching via global live stream. His paper had been officially published online in the "New Horizons" section of the New England Journal of Medicine, accompanied by an editorial piece titled "The Birth of a New Theory."

The title of the paper was short, consisting of just one line: "A Unified Theory of Development and Repair: From One-Dimensional to Four-Dimensional Framework." The subtitle was "A Model Based on a Gene-Protein-Cell-Tissue-Body Five-Layer Structure." The main text was twenty pages long, with over three hundred references and eleven diagrams. The last diagram was a closed curve, connecting the starting point of development and the ending point of repair, forming a complete circle. Beside the curve was only one annotation: "Lifecycle."

Yang Ping stood at the podium, with a presentation computer in front of him, displaying the first page of the paper on the screen. He did not have a speech manuscript, nor had he prepared a PowerPoint presentation. The content of his speech was already written in the twenty pages of the paper, but he knew the audience did not need him to read those pages again. They needed to hear what lay behind those twenty pages. How the diagram was drawn, why those lines are connected, and why the curve was not straight but circular.

He began to speak.

"The last time I presented the framework of this theory was three years ago. Back then, I said that three-dimensional guidance, stem cells, K Therapy, and balance theory might be the same thing. I said ’might’ because the data was insufficient at the time, and there were gaps in the chain of evidence. Today, three years later, everything I’ve written in the paper is supported by data. Today, as I stand here, I no longer say ’might.’ What I am reporting to you is a theoretically validated framework."

The audience was very quiet. The translation echoed from the headphones of simultaneous interpreters, delayed by less than a second. Yang Ping knew that more than half of the over two thousand people present had already read his paper.

"The core of the unified theory is based on a single hypothesis, but this hypothesis is very powerful. The hypothesis is: all biological processes of the human body—development, maintenance, repair, aging—are different expressions of the same underlying logic. Development is constructing something from nothing. Maintenance keeps what is built running. Repair restores the damaged parts to their original state. Aging occurs when the maintenance process gradually fails and repair cannot keep up with the rate of damage. These four processes are four aspects of the same event. It is not four separate events, but one major event."

He pressed the page-turn key, and a diagram appeared on the screen: the diagram moving from one-dimensional to four-dimensional. A line, a plane, a cube, a time axis. These four elements stack together to form a dynamic, multidimensional, continually evolving structure.

"One dimension is the genetic sequence. A linear arrangement of four letters, three billion characters. These three billion characters are the source code of the human body. Two dimensions depict the gene regulatory network. One-dimensional sequences fold in space to form a complex regulatory network. One gene can regulate another gene, one protein can activate a pathway, and a pathway can influence the expression of hundreds of genes. This network is not flat; it is layered and structured. Three dimensions outline the spatial arrangement of cells. The order of genes on the chromosome corresponds to the positioning of cells on the embryonic body axis. The linear sequence of one dimension, through folding and twisting, becomes three-dimensional spatial coordinates. Four dimensions represent time. Genes do not activate all at once but follow a precise timetable. Which gene expresses first, which later, which continuously, and which only during specific windows—all these sequences are also written in the genetic sequence."

He paused to drink a sip of water. Not because he was thirsty, but to give the audience time to digest the information. Someone in the hall bowed to read the conference manual, others took rapid notes in their notebooks, and some removed their glasses to wipe them before putting them back on.

He continued: "So, to understand the human body, one cannot look at it from a single dimension. Looking at genes alone is a linear sequence, too simplistic. Looking only at the regulatory network is a flat structure, missing a dimension. Viewing only cell arrangement gives a three-dimensional space but lacks a time axis. Observing only the time sequence gives a four-dimensional dynamic process, but omits the underlying code. Only when the four dimensions are combined does one see the complete picture. The five levels—genes, proteins, cells, tissues, and body—each contain information from all four dimensions. Information from the lower layers transmits upward, and the state of the higher levels gives feedback downward, forming a closed loop."

He switched to the next diagram, which was the last one in the paper: the closed curve. The starting point was the fertilized egg, and the endpoint was death. A large circle was drawn in the middle of the curve; development occupied the first half, and repair the second half. When the first half ended, the human body was already built; when the second half began, the human body started to maintain itself. The first half was construction, and the second half was maintenance.

"The circle in this diagram expresses the core of the unified theory. Development is a process from A to Z, while repair is a process from Z to A. The two paths are the same path, with opposite directions and identical structure. Knowing development allows one to infer repair; if repair encounters issues, one can look back to development for answers. Some diseases in adults are essentially parts of the developmental program malfunctioning post-adulthood. Perhaps certain doors that should open remain closed, or those that should shut remain open, or perhaps the wrong doors are opened or closed. Treatment involves not rebuilding a new system, but finding the wrongly opened doors and closing them, or finding the doors that should have opened but did not, and opening them."

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