Rainbow Hot Springs
The microbiology conference was set to begin the next day. As soon as Dr. Mullis saw me, he extended his hand for a shake.
"Nice to meet you. You're that young doctor researching restriction enzymes, right, Mr. Parks?"
"That's right."
"It's great to finally meet you."
We'd exchanged a few letters before, but this was our first time meeting in person. And so, we set off toward Yellowstone National Park. It was a tour arranged by the Four Seasons Hotel near the conference venue—a sightseeing spot we'd planned to visit beforehand.
We hiked deep into the park. The weather turned out better than expected. The hot springs were hotter than I'd imagined. Spotting some mushrooms growing by the path, Dr. Mullis struck up a conversation.
"Do you use drugs when you do your research, Doctor?"
It was a sudden question.
"Pardon?"
"Back in my undergrad days, I made and used a lot of LSD. It helped with my research. I don't do it much these days, though."
"I see."
Dr. Mullis, standing beside me, wore a large straw hat and dark sunglasses. He scratched his head sheepishly.
"Your work is so genius-level, I figured you must be using something. The sheer volume of it, too."
What on earth is he talking about? Nothing like this was in any medical textbook.
"Does it really help with research?"
"Yeah. Hallucinogens make it possible to have those tough, out-of-the-box ideas you couldn't get otherwise..."
He answered matter-of-factly. Schools should teach this stuff. If you need drugs to do Nobel-worthy research, then good kids should eat hallucinogenic mushrooms for breakfast to spark their creativity. I chuckled inwardly, but there wasn't a hint of irony in Dr. Mullis's words. He stopped walking beside me, rubbing his knee—probably his age catching up after the long hike.
"Must be nice to be young."
"Yes."
"The youngest-ever Lasker Award winner... Impressive. What happened?"
I glanced at Dr. Mullis. Crows flew overhead. I watched the birds passing over the park for a moment.
What happened?
"Dr. Rosalind Franklin was the first to take an X-ray diffraction image of DNA. Rumor has it, one of her colleagues showed it to another research team. That team figured out the structure of the gene first."
The famous Photo 51. It happened back in the 1950s—a distant historical event to me, but something Dr. Mullis would remember firsthand. He scratched his head.
"Why bring that up?"
"The team of Watson and Crick, who published first after seeing that photo, won the Nobel for elucidating the gene's structure. Dr. Franklin died at 37 from radiation exposure."
Franklin played a pivotal role in determining DNA's structure but never got the Nobel and died young. That's the common narrative. Dr. Mullis nodded.
"Tragic..."
I shook my head. The story was a bit distorted—focused on personal drama in research, fabricating dramatic conflicts that didn't exist at the time.
"People have it wrong. After that, Dr. Franklin elucidated the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus, discovering how viruses work. Right before she died, she was researching the poliovirus."
"Ah."
History's tragedy. People fixate on who was first, who got the Nobel. That's important, sure. But it's not the core. She was central to DNA's structure and later to uncovering virus mechanisms. If Franklin had lived, she'd have wondered why posterity obsessed over that instead of her real contributions to gene and virus structures. At least, that's how I saw it.
"In short: What matters in medicine is advancing humanity and science. That drama? That's for later."
With those words, a roar echoed from afar. We were nearing our destination—a white plume of water shooting up from behind the hill.
"I'm just a company man, though?"
Oh, right. Dr. Mullis was a researcher at Cetus Corporation, a private firm. I scratched my head awkwardly. He probably hadn't even considered winning a Nobel yet—just clocking in and doing his work.
We arrived at our destination and gazed at Yellowstone's hot spring. The pool shimmered with rainbow hues. The outer edges were red, shallow water orange, then yellow, green, and the deepest part a vivid blue.
Time to stand on the giant's shoulder. Leaning on the park railing, I pointed at the rainbow hot spring with my fingertip.
Dr. Mullis stared at the multicolored pool.
"See that, Dr. Mullis?"
"The colors at the bottom are weird."
"Why do you think it's like that?"
He scratched his head.
"Sulfur deposits or something?"
The rainbow colors in Yellowstone's hot springs came from temperature differences. Hot spring water rose from below—the hottest in the deepest zones, lukewarm at the edges. Blue bacteria in the hottest areas, yellow in the middle, red at the fringes, creating the rainbow effect. Science presented with elegant, visual grace.
"So, is there a reason sulfur deposits would change color in a specific gradient like that?"
I could see the gears turning in Dr. Mullis's head, like he'd realized something.
"Bacteria? But bacteria can't survive in boiling water... Ah?"
He squinted. In fact, bacteria could survive boiling water. We were looking at them right now.
"If bacteria can live in boiling water like that, doesn't it make sense they could synthesize genes at those temperatures too?"
He let out an exclamation.
"Holy shit."
Kary Mullis. He was a scientist at Cetus Corporation. His team had been grappling with a problem lately: How to find and synthesize genes. Not a simple issue. Their current approach involved adding new enzymes each time to replicate the gene process step by step. Or... it was complicated.
Last year, sequencing one virus's bases took two years. At this rate, fully sequencing a human genome? One team working nonstop for a million years would do it. That's how it was with current tech.
Now, thoughts buzzed furiously in the genius's mind. Bacterial components. A gene-synthesizing enzyme that worked in boiling water.
Does this even make sense?
But the solution was right in front of us. A question Cetus had pondered since its founding—solved overnight.
Kary Mullis—the future Nobel laureate—seemed to grasp what I meant. Of course he did; there was no reason he wouldn't.
"Going back to Franklin earlier: The gene's functions of information storage and replication are closely tied to its structure."
There was only one answer that fit all the conditions. Even chromosome structure showed it—coiling like thread could only be a helix. Ropes are twisted into helices too. No matter how complex the problem, its structural essence at the core is simple. Obvious once you know it. That's why Watson shouted "Double helix!" the moment he saw that X-ray diffraction photo.
Now the next step was clear too. An insight Dr. Mullis would have in about ten years—probably mid-trip.
He nodded gravely.
"Right."
"The covalent bonds forming DNA's backbone withstand high heat, but the hydrogen bonds linking the strands separate easily. They open freely at around human body temperature."
Dr. Mullis sighed.
"How do you come up with ideas like this?"
"Standing on giants' shoulders, that's all."
My giants were just a bit taller. That solved every riddle. A gene-synthesizing enzyme stable at temperatures where the double helix denatures? It existed—right there in the hot spring. Separating strands for replication? Just raise the temperature to split them, lower it to reanneal.
Dr. Mullis glanced back and forth between me and the rainbow pool, his expression like a cat eyeing a toilet full of laxatives.
"Could we go soak in the hot spring today and extract samples of those thermophilic bacteria?"
"No. Let's make a plan."
Like hell we'd die for that. Yellowstone's rainbow hot springs were hotter than boiling eggs.
He nodded.
"And I'd like us to co-author a paper on what we discussed today, Dr. Mullis."
"Of course."
After all the twists and turns, things were going to plan. Now we just needed to write a Nobel-level paper... But with a Nobel-level co-author, it wouldn't be hard.