Now that I've had such tremendous help from y'all, from the technical diving side, here is a small excerpt from my work in progress. This is the science/virology side of the novel that I hope not to make too heavy for the average reader. I'll either include a glossary or explain some of the terminology in the dialogue. For this post, CPE means "cytopathic effect," or how "sick" the cells become. 4+ CPE means almost total destruction of the cells being infected. I think I can make this interesting to divers, scientists and lay people, without losing too many people.
To make it a little more clear, I'll set the stage for this excerpt. Zach has already recovered some of the vials (actually freeze dried ampoules) from the wreck, and has done some preliminary tests at the direction of his boss, Dr. Ted Kowalik. He is reporting his findings in their weekly lab meeting.
Dr. Kowalik peered over his reading glasses. “So, Zach, what did you find in your mystery amps from that wreck?”
Zach took a deep breath, straightened his notes and looked at the team gathered in the conference room. “Well, I inoculated several flasks with one of the amps. I did our standard one to a hundred dilution and we definitely have something growing. The E6 and BHK cells were at 4+ CPE on day 3. I saw minimal CPE in the MDCK cells. I didn’t see any growth in the egg cultures, so I don’t think we have a flu sample. The CPE developed too quickly for a filovirus. Maybe we’re looking at one of the herpesviruses or even a henipavirus. The CPE isn’t consistent with what I’ve seen with a herpesvirus, though. I’m thinking we have a henipavirus.”
“Are you sure about the egg cultures, Zach?” Dr. Kowalik pressed. “That doesn’t make any sense. From what Dr. Kozlov mentioned in his notes, the labels on those amps indicate some sort of flu strain. You might want to repeat the egg cultures again.” He held up a hand as Zach started to speak. “Let me finish, Zach, I know what you are thinking. We need to make absolutely certain what we have before reporting it back to the CDC. Besides that, we all know that the first henipaviruses weren’t discovered until relatively recently. These amps you found are much older than that.”
Sophie placed her hand on Zach’s shoulder. “Dr. Kowalik, I’ve never known Zach to make a mistake like that.”
“I didn’t say he made a mistake, Sophie, only that we need to repeat the egg cultures,” Ted interrupted, “Let’s not get defensive here. That won’t solve anything.”
Sophie looked over at Zach, then back to Dr. Kowalik. “What I was going to say was that in addition to evaluating the slides he made, we could run some RNA from the positive cultures against some of the known henipaviruses, including the current outbreak strain. I can do this while Zach repeats the cultures.”
Just a small snapshot of the science side of the novel. Enjoy...
