Plague Doctor

Chapter 506: Negative selection, Positive selection, Stabilizing selection

“Negative selection… Positive selection… stabilizing selection…” Every day, the world welcomed about 390000 new lives, or a baby was born at an average of 0.24 seconds. In other words, a blink and 5 babies would have been born. If one collected the first cry of each baby in one day, it would be a powerful supersonic attack; It basically had the same effect in Gu Jun’s mind now. Negative selection, positive selection, stabilizing selection… Innumerable young voices twisted together to smash against his nerves and mind.

From the moment Gu Jun followed Wang Ruoxiang, Cai Zixuan and the rest to First People Hospital, he could hear the waves of sound already. When he reached the isolated baby nursery, the veins in his body popped. But even so he could not be sure if the voices were real or he was just imagining them.

Suddenly a baby cried and it came from inside the nursery. The nursery was quite large. Incubators and other medical devices lined against the wall. At that moment, most of the incubators were empty, only 5 were taken. There were 2 boys and 3 girls. 1 positive selection, 2 negative selection and 2 stabilizing selection.

There was a piercing jolt through his head that caused Gu Jun to take a deep breath. The oxygen tank inside the protective suit filled up his lungs. Gu Jun gave a long gasp but it did not help relax his heart.

“Tycoon Jun?” Cai Zixuan who walked beside him asked with concern. Wang Ruoxiang also turned around During the Locust Plague, she showed extreme sensitivity towards DNA radiation poisoning. She was ordered to the hospital to assist.

“I’m fine.” Gu Jun answered, “It’s just my heart.”

The protective suit was just the protocol. He actually knew this day would come, the Ulthar cats and the Great Atal had warned him about it. Summoning Shub-Niggurath to fight against the Crawling Chaos would come with its price. The price was more than the losses several hundred thousand pregnant women felt during the war… It appeared like Shub-Niggurath caused not only stillborn but had taken hold of future human generations as well.

What the leopard cat said echoed in Gu Jun’s mind. “This change is different from the tragedies that you have faced recently… Disease and plague are to claim lives but Shub-Niggurath doesn’t do that, it produces and evolves life. But that kind of over-abundance can crush a civilization too.”

Once they returned from Dreamlands, Gu Jun quoted the whole warning to Phecda. Therefore, once this incident reached the Spell Department, it caused a massive ripple immediately. It had come.

“I believe those are not part of a sentence but complete statements.” When Gu Jun was briefed about what the babies said, he came to this conclusion immediately. Soon, emergency reports from other countries confirmed that. Be it America, Russia, England, all over the world, this strange phenomenon was happening, the difference was the babies spoke in their native language. However not all newborns showed this tendency. There was nothing too conspicuous about the chosen babies either. Some of the abnormal babies had both parents, some had a single mother, some were even fostered babies. The mothers ranged from age 18 to 40 plus. They came from different walks of life and careers.

Just from statistics, the selection of babies was completely random. Even in the same ward, with 5 waiting mothers, there might be 1, 2 or even no babies with the strange reaction. The same was happening over at Mysterium World. This was not a coincidence.

The baby who cried was Xu Qiuyue. It was the first abnormal baby who was born in this hospital, a negative selection. Gu Jun stood before the incubator and stared at the swaddled baby. She was even smaller than a Zoog. She cried until her face was red. Her wrinkly eyes were not yet open.

“I’ll go get the nurse.” Cai Zixuan hurried away. Gu Jun took another deep breath. He was reminded of the child’s father kneeling before them, begging them to save his daughter. The child’s mother was still recovering. She had no idea how serious the situation had gotten.

Positive selection, this was a concept from natural selection. To put it simply, when there was a mutation within an organism’s DNA that allows it a greater chance at survival and reproduction, thus benefiting its future generation, this mutated DNA would be spread within its group.

The contrast to it would be negative selection. If an organism’s DNA mutated in such a way that it caused its chance of survival and reproduction to lower, it would naturally be eliminated. In the long history of human evolution, there had to have been many different gene mutations. Despite the name, negative mutation was a positive thing for evolution because it meant that the weakest link within the group would have an early death, thus lowering its possibility of inheriting its weak genetic materials to its future generation.

However, whether a genetic mutation was a positive or negative selection was totally dependent on the situation. For example, EDAR370A is a unique gene code for most Asians. One of its coding is to make sure that the human bodies have 15 percent more compact sweat glands than other races; the other function is that the organism has straighter and fuller hair, instead of curly hair. This was a positive selection in ancient eastern land. However if EDAR370A is placed within an environment with extended hot weather, it would be a negative selection. This is because more sweat glands mean greater loss of water from the body. At a location where water source is scarce, having less sweat glands is the positive selection.

During the Little Ice Age, diabetic gene was a positive selection because diabetes helps with ice-resistance. Thus those with diabetes would have a higher chance to survive. In other words, during the Little Ice Age, those with diabetes average a longer lifespan than those without. But in today’s age, the diabetic gene is a negative selection. Therefore, a genetic mutation itself has no absolute positive or negative selection. It has to correspond to the environment. Those who adapt survive. Therefore as the environmental factors continue to change, a race’s genetic pool has to diversify to survive.

Some of the genetic materials, that might appear useless or even harmless, are in the human DNA because they were once the best survival tactic or perhaps one day they would become the necessary gene for survival. If an organism did not get the wrong or right gene from its forebear, then it would be a stabilizing selection.

Positive selection, negative selection, stabilizing selection.

But what were the environmental factors in this case? Was it a new era where dark forces’ activity had reached its peak?

Gu Jun noticed that inside the nursery, of the 5 babies, the two babies with stabilizing selection were soundly asleep. The 1 baby with positive selection had already opened his eyes. His dark pupils darted about as if taking in the new, unfamiliar world. The two negative selection babies could not stop crying like they were extremely uncomfortable.

At that moment, Wang Ruoxiang said, “I believe Xu Qiuyue is opening her eyes…”

Gu Jun noticed it as well. The negative selection baby, Xu Qiuyue’s eyes were fluttering. The time needed for a newborn to open their eyes was different according to the individual, it ranged from directly from birth to as long as a week.

For some reason, as Gu Jun stared at the fluttering eyelids, his heart wrenched.

Suddenly, the girl’s eyes flew open while she continued the cry.

In the baby’s eyes, there was no pupil, there was only eye white. In other words, her eyes had no crystalline lens, instead there were only vitreous bodies…

Negative selection.

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