This is a fast moving story about a genetic engineering experiment
that went awry. The tale is set in various universities. What really
goes on within them comes to light along with their personal
relationships, competitive interactions and romances of academics.
Professor William Huntington and his group create the first artificial
multicellular organism which is an extensively studied nematode, a
small worm-like creature. This nematode is designed to be identical
to the original although its DNA has been modified to facilitate
genetic manipulations. Tragically the methods used in its making
have allowed the incorporation of genetic material from a distant
nematode species which is a plant pathogen. In spite of safeguards,
an accident allows the artificial nematode to escape from the
Huntington lab. In modern science everything from falsifying data
to the outright theft of the ideas of others frequently takes place.
University politics are also detailed through the lives of the main
characters, all of whose fates are greatly affected by the nematode
plague.
Professor Jonathan Kuhn is a geneticist with a PhD in Genetics from
the University of California and his post doctoral studies were at
Purdue University in the Department of Biochemistry. For the last
three years he has been a visiting professor of biology at New York
University, Shanghai, China. He was involved in the founding of four
biotechnology companies in the area of applied genetic engineering
and nanotechnology. During his career he has published about 50
scientific works and been granted a number of patents.
Professor Kuhn presently lives in Haifa, Israel. This is his second
novel.