Gene Mapper Read Online Free PDF Page B

principles myself when I first encountered them as a polytechnic student.
    “Well, let’s see. As the leaves and blossoms of distilled crops grow, color expression genes trigger development of receptors for chemical messengers—plant hormones. When the messengers are dispersed from towers in the right concentrations, color expression genes are activated and promote cell division …”
    Kurokawa’s wide-eyed expression said I don’t understand. I didn’t get it either at first, and I had a lot more background at the time.
    “Let me draw you a picture. Sorry, could I have something to write with?”
    The waitress returned with a tray full of writing widgets. The tray was just a prop, another nice touch from Zucca to make you feel like a customer in a “real” café. There was a full selection, everything from quills to drawing pens. Everything links with your workspace drawing app—they’re all the same AR widget.
    I chose four highlighting pens in different colors. Kurokawa leaned forward and picked up—I couldn’t believe Zucca had something so primitive—a red lead pencil.
    “Draw anywhere you like. Use the tablecloth or a napkin,” said the waitress. “If you need ‘paper’ to take your work away with you, just let me know. Oh, one more thing”—she pointed to the space between me and Kurokawa—”If you write anything here, just remember you can’t print it out. Have fun!”
    “Thanks. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”
    She hoisted the tray onto her shoulder, winked, and walked away. I was impressed with the natural way she handled the tray, which was of course empty.
    “Shall we begin? Let’s say our crop responds to only two chemical messengers, orange and green. When both messengers arrive in the right concentration, the leaves of the plant change color. With SR06, the style sheet would look like this.” I wrote a style sheet selector, .lea f (orange==green), in the air over the table. “Now let’s see how the color is expressed when the messengers arrive.”
    I drew two small crosses on the tablecloth about eight inches apart. One green, one orange.
    “These are the messenger towers. Mother Mekong has a few thousand, but two is enough for this example. The chemical messengers are dispersed from these towers.”
    I looked up to make sure he was with me and drew a circle centered on each cross, about two inches in diameter in matching colors.
    “Mamoru, what do they use for messengers?”
    “Mostly leaf alcohols. Other compounds are used too, but most of the time it’s something with the same chemical structure as a natural attractor.”
    “Is that to comply with the Full Organic protocol?”
    “I don’t know. But if they stay natural, they don’t have to worry about nature addicts tramping around the site.”
    “Do these messengers use—what are they called—optical isomers?”
    This was an old term. I wasn’t sure how Kurokawa came up with it. He was talking about chiral molecules—molecules that are mirror images of each other but nonsuperposable, like left and right human hands. Some very weird effects can happen when big molecules, like sugars or proteins, are switched with their optical isomers.
    “We usually just call them isomers. Where’d you get that anyway? Now that I think of it, L&B has a policy of not using them with their distilled crops. The competition stopped using them too after the fifth generation.”
    “Thanks. Just wondering.”
    “Let’s keep going.”
    I put a fingertip to the orange circle. Handles popped up for resizing and dragging, mimicking my workspace environment. I pressed on the resizing handle and set the animation parameters. The circle started expanding.
    “The tower releases a pulse of the messenger in aerosol form. It spreads out over the field.” The little circle, oscillating gently as it expanded, did a good job of replicating the way the aerosol moved out from the tower.
    “Now, if we send pulses from both towers