Read Biogenesis for Free Online Page B

me, I requested Mr. Miura, Dr. Sakakibara, and Dr. Akedera to discuss the matter. There were some harsh exchanges and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The conference needed to wait until a streamlined statement could be submitted by Dr. Sakakibara, and now it was the mass media’s turn to give me a hard time.”
    From the transcript of that day’s conference as published by the local newspaper: “We have the unfortunate responsibility to report that this morning, at 4:22, the winged mouse Ponta died, followed by Ai at 4:23. The cause of death is still unknown and will have to await the pathology results. No significant changes in the condition of either of the pair had been reported.” 9
    Center Director Sakakibara was also in attendance at the conference. He fielded the questions that required expertise, and the reporters naturallywanted to know why both had died. He responded, “There may have been an environmental factor, but as for human error it seems unlikely, and I think that’s probably a negative since no changes occurred in any of the other animals in the Center’s charge.”
    Reporter Masayuki Nagamine of the
Kitasorachi News
, who had been following the winged mouse story with a great deal of interest from the outset, posed an astute question: “Why do we see, both now and in past cases, deaths of two winged mice occurring at the same time?”
    On this point, Dr. Sakakibara attempted an inarticulate response that stressed the element of coincidence and replied only that it was an issue going forward.
    Yet somehow, even a year later, let alone an academic presentation, no postmortem results were forthcoming –– nor has a single paper, Drs. Sakakibara and Akedera having passed away in the interim, been published to this day. There are only a few newspaper articles and a review.
    It was Dr. Sakakibara who compiled Dr. Akedera’s research results after the latter passed away, but none of it was published. All of that is currently in my possession, and among them is also the initial draft of a paper that was clearly meant to satisfy the prerequisites of English-language journals such as
Nature
and
Science
. It was only after Dr. Sakakibara’s passing, in turn, that I was able to read the manuscript, and why he failed to present the material to the world remains unclear.
    Normally, content of this caliber should be submitted to an appropriate English-language venue rather than be made public via the present report. However, the paper is critical to understanding what about the winged mouse so excited academic interest in Dr. Akedera, so with the permission of his family and in a manner that will not preclude a subsequent presentation, I will be discussing just its abstract.
    The paper concerns the lifespan of winged mice and belongs more to natural history than to Dr.Akedera’s field of molecular biology. The original is in English, but the gist is that the winged mouse boasts a stupefying lifespan.
    The conjecture is really a simple application of the observations made by Drs. Ishikawa and Sakakibara. Dr. Ishikawa had discovered minute markings reminiscent of year rings on the backs of the animal’s wings and reported the morphological feature with accompanying photographs. Dr. Sakakibara also maintained a detailed photographic record of the winged mice every year 6 , and Dr. Akedera’s discovery was based on the photos on display within the center. After a detailed analysis, Dr. Akedera concluded that the concentric pattern grew by a few millimeters per year. Furthermore, he held that the rule fit all of the patterns as photographed over the years.
    Now and then a discovery will occur only when a surfeit of evidence is viewed through some hypothesis, prior to which the facts are, as it were, seen yet unseen. Observation and analysis are completely different beasts, and making a certain observation does not always lead to extractingthe truth of the matter. The wing markings are precisely an instance