Christy Esmahan: The Laptev Virus

Special thanks go to my fellow grad student and dear friend, Dr. Carmen Guerrero, for critical reading of the manuscript, especially regarding every part of the story concerning the mice. She also provided me with the story of how researchers try to make life easier on the lab mice.

Thanks also to Theresa Kleintank, with her eagle eye for spotting typos that everyone else missed. If there are any left, it’s my fault entirely for messing with the manuscript after she last saw it!

As always, many thanks to Daniel for his help with the cover of this novel and his enthusiastic feedback about the plot. I also appreciated the encouragement from Pedro, Adriano and Tania who were excited about this book and reminded me regularly of this.

My loving and supportive husband deserves buckets of applause for his multiple readings of the manuscript and careful attention to all parts of the story, especially the scientific studies, to make them as credible as possible. He was my sounding board, my cheerleader, my brainstorm buddy and my best friend throughout this process.

The Laptev Virus began as a personal dare, on the first day of the 2014 NaNoMo, (National Novel Writing Month, which is always in November.) I was inspired to take this dare by the many bloggers and writers who have done likewise in previous years and posted their compelling tales, so thanks to all of you too, whoever you are.

Most good stories have strong roots in truth, and that is also the case with THE LAPTEV VIRUS. I first got the idea for writing this novel from an article I read about the discovery of Megaviridae, and Giant viruses which were orders of magnitude larger than any that had ever been seen before. Drs. Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, working at the Structural & Genomic Information laboratory (IGS, CNRS and Aix-Marseille University) are world renowned experts in this area, and it was one of their latest discoveries, the Pithovirus sibericum , found under the permafrost and believed to be 30,000 years old, which became the premise for this novel. The researchers stated clearly that this Pithovirus is not a human pathogen, but they suggested that there could be others which are pathogens and are lying dormant in the frozen soil.

Their original scientific publication, (Legendre M, Bartoli J, Shmakova L, Jeudy S, Labadie K, Adrait A, Lescot M, Poirot O, Bertaux L, Bruley C, Couté Y, Rivkina E, Abergel C, Claverie JM (2014) Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology . Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 111: 4274-4279) can be found on-line and should definitely be read by all who are interested in the fascinating topic of these colossal viruses.

While I’m on the subject, I would like to take a moment to congratulate Drs. Claverie and Abergel and their team of researchers on their discovery of the still viable 30,000 year old Pithovirus sibericum which has been cited as number 53 in the Top 100 Stories of 2014in the scientific journal, Discover .

The Los Angeles Times story that I use in the Prologue of this novel is an excerpt of the actual article that appeared on that date, but there were some factual errors in the report which, with the help of Dr. Claverie, I have corrected. Those corrections are in brackets.

Obviously, the Houston Chronicle article that is read in Sarah’s lab is entirely fictional.

Good stories also have parts that are exaggerated for effect, and I willingly admit that I took liberties with several truths. First and foremost, of course, is the fact that none of the giant viruses (which I call megaviruses in the novel, though technically the viruses discovered in the Arctic do not belong to that scientific genre) discovered to date in different parts of the planet are human pathogens. I cannot help but agree with Dr. Claverie and his team that finding pathogens we thought were eradicated, or of which we were not aware, is one of many perils that comes with the melting of our polar ice caps. It may just be a matter of time before we find a cousin of smallpox or some other nefarious pathogen which had been frozen in time.

Another area where I stretched the truth was in the speed with which Sarah and her colleagues made discoveries. If only research could progress so nicely and so quickly! I think most of humankind’s problems would have been solved by now if research could naturally occur at the pace it does in this novel. But, alas, as all of my colleagues in science will quickly vouchsafe, research is arduous and there are far more dead-ends than discoveries.

The stories I tell about Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, Typhoid Mary, using an electric blanket on the mice to help them wake up from anesthesia better, the part about mice reacting differently to male and female handlers, the story of Koko the gorilla, the intriguing discovery of the lifecycle of Dicrocoeleum , the discoveries of the Czechoslovakian scientist who has a Toxo infection himself, and the ants, acacia and giraffe symbiosis, including the modification to this last story in later years, are all true to the best of my knowledge. And Graeter’s really is, hands down, the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted.

Toxoplasmosis, however, is strictly a pathogen and has never, ever been implicated in protecting someone from another infection. It is a teratogen, which means that it can cause serious birth defects to fetuses. It is transmitted through contact with cat feces, and really can linger in soil for up to a year or more. This is another reason to avoid gardening without gloves.

Also, there really are high numbers of people with undetected Toxoplasmosis infections across the world, and it has been implicated in mental illness, especially as of late. There are some really interesting articles on the web about the subject. I have put the links on my website: www.christyesmahan.com

As a way of acknowledging the contributions that so many scientists have made over time, almost every one of my characters has a last name of a scientist. I encourage my readers to look up the last names and learn about these scientific contributions, especially those Redi and Spallanzani.

Finally, although I have a disclaimer at the beginning of the novel saying that all of the characters and events depicted are from my imagination or are used fictitiously, I think it bears repeating, especially since I pick on BP. Stan’s experience is entirely fictional and I could have very easily chosen a different oil company as his former employer as there have been so many unfortunate accidents. It is the nature of the business and as long as humanity continues to demand fossil fuels, we will have issues with drilling and refining accidents.

If you have any questions or comments for me I hope that you will seek me out on Facebook, Goodreads or my blog and let me know!

Thank you for reading this novel. I would very much appreciate it if you would rate it on Amazon and tell your friends and families about it. If your book club decides to read THE LAPTEV VIRUS and would like to ask me questions, I would be happy to be available by Skype.

The Cantabria American School series:

BUENO (Book 1)

SINCO (Book 2)

BRUJAS (Book 3)

GRAMMY AND THE WILEY RACCOON

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, or groups of persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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