Sins Of Academia

This is a fast moving story about a genetic engineering experiment that went awry. The tale is set in various universities. What really goes on within them comes to light along with their personal relationships, competitive interactions and romances of academics. Professor William Huntington and his group create the first artificial multicellular organism which is an extensively studied nematode, a small worm-like creature. This nematode is designed to be identical to the original although its DNA has been modified to facilitate genetic manipulations. Tragically the methods used in its making have allowed the incorporation of genetic material from a distant nematode species which is a plant pathogen. In spite of safeguards, an accident allows the artificial nematode to escape from the Huntington lab. In modern science everything from falsifying data to the outright theft of the ideas of others frequently takes place. University politics are also detailed through the lives of the main characters, all of whose fates are greatly affected by the nematode plague.