DNA comparisons - Log from Sam Sema'J and med staff

[Sam_SemaJ 0]

Sam Sema'J walked from the turbolift toward the main entrance to sickbay. He had been called back from the away mission aboard the Flying Trapeze for who knows what reason. It was unlikely that it was bad news, though, seeing as it removed him from an EVA suit and Zero-G, something he hadn't been exposed to in many, many years, and was not enjoying in the least.

 

As he crossed the threshold into sickbay, a young woman looked up from the console at which she was working. Her chestnut hair was pushed behind her ears, revealing two wide trails of grayish green and blue spots that ran from her forehead down the sides of her neck, disappearing into her collar. The pip on her collar showed she was a PO 1st class, common for enlisted doctors. The grey stripe down the sleeve of her lab-coat denoted her as a resident, not uncommon on a ship this size, but almost always accompanied by attending or administrative medical staff, and most certainly by an officer. None of these appeared to be posted here currently, something Sam would have to ask the still-unfamiliar XO about. She was not the same doctor who had taken Ariom for a physical, so there must be a few of such residents.

 

The young Trill doctor stood as he approached, "Sorry to bother you, Counselor…er…Doctor." Sam was familiar with this grasping for the right title, so many in academia had their demands of "doctor", professor", etc…he was just content with "Sam", but this young graduate seemed insistent on bestowing him with a salutaion.

 

"Either is fine." he said dismissively. "I don't believe we've met, Doctor…?"

 

"Torra," she said with a brief smile and curt professionalism. "I was looking over all of the records from Dr. Teth's physical on a Mr. Ariom, and I got caught up on his DNA profile, particularly the species identification.

 

Teth, he must be the young Bajoran man who did Ariom's physical. As for Torra, he wasn't sure if that was her first or last name, if she was joined or not. Possibly still too young...these questions would have to be answered at a later time. Sam tried to commit the two names to memory as he walked around the desk and joined Torra at the monitor, a DNA molecule filled the screen with various unintelligible markings and notations surrounding it. "The transporter scanner flagged him as human when we brought him on board, and I believe a tricorder scan confirmed that."

 

She nodded quickly. "Yes, well Homo sapiens has a very high level of genetic diversity, those scanners are calibrated to take a lot of genetic drift into account and still identify someone as human. That type of variation shows up as adjusted values in a small percentage of very isolated genes which mainly have to do with personal traits. This however is spread more widely; extremely minute, but uniform changes across the whole genome. The usual scanners are not really capable of pulling something like that out of context and accurately labeling it as something human…but…not.

 

Sam gave a few nods as he listened closely, but towards the end she was stretching the limits of his genomic understanding. "So if it's "not"…then what is it?

 

She smiled a little more freely at her own vagary. "Well, think about the isolated racial backgrounds of humanity. If someone with completely asian DNA and someone with completely Caucasian DNA procreated, you'd get someone "half-Asian", and they would likely look mostly Asian because of the dominance of those physical traits.

 

Sam nodded, following her.

 

She continued, "With a few generations of staying in a Caucasian gene pool you might have someone who you'd call 1/16 asian, and the dominance of the asian traits would have faded considerably by that point. The picture I'm getting from this genetic model is of someone who is very far removed from, but still a descendant of cross-propagation between human and another species. You might say that Mr. Ariom is 127/128ths human, and his human traits are for all intents and purposes, completely dominant."

 

Sam looked at the model (not that it gave him anything past what her explanation had) and regarded her words thoughtfully. "So what is the 128th?"

 

Dr. Torra tapped a button and changed screens, isolated fragments of DNA came up. "Well, I think I have enough here to do a comparative analysis against a complete model of the original species, however, this has not matched anything in our current database. That doesn't mean we can rule them all out, this is just a fairly small bit of data to work with."

 

Sam regarded the situation carefully. "Well, I'm afraid that the only way you will get more information than this is for us to dig into the history of these people, get more genetic samples, find out what drives their culture and society. It's already looking to be something totally unique. But we won't get any of that data till we head into the nebula with Ariom." He looked at her apologetically. "I think you're going to have to put your analysis on hold. Is there anything else that sticks out from his physical?"

 

She flipped through a few screens of medical records. "Well…in terms of his health, he's fairly physically fit. He's not sick with anything particularly, not right now. However his immune system does show a greater propensity toward bacterial and viral infections than we're accustomed to seeing, as well as his skin showing evidence of some fungal damage."

 

Seeing Sam's raised brow of concern, Dr. Torra shook her head quickly. "Oh, sorry, Doctor, I'm making it seem like he's disease ridden. What I mean is…his immune system is not as far built up or not nearly as boosted as ours are…it's almost as if"

 

Sam took this opportunity to cut her off, understanding where she was headed. "This makes perfect sense. Ariom comes from what you might describe as an early maritime culture. We're not entirely sure of the nebula's specific properties yet, but it appears that they live in a pre-industrial society, in colonies throughout the nebula. That's really as much as we know, but it explains his state of hygiene and health. His labor aboard a ship accounts for his fitness. Is there anything else?"

 

Torra continued looking through the data. "Well, his reflex test numbers were a little outside the curve we expect to see….but they're not exactly outliers. Truthfully I'd have to analyze them much more closely to get anything concrete. I can let you know." She looked back at him with an apologetic smile.

 

Sam thought for a moment and then nodded. "Please do, I'd be very interested in what you come up with. In the meantime, I'm going to have to do some digging in the field to answer our DNA question. Thank you very much for bringing all of this to my attention, it's all very…interesting"

 

The young doctor nodded with a smile, "No problem, I thought you'd want to see. We didn't really interact with Terban much, he kept his appointments and kept to himself. Even kept the door blacked out most of the time, even when he wasn't meeting with people."

 

Sam turned and looked toward the glass door leading to his counselor's office, which could be blacked out for privacy via a button on his desk, "Well…I keep it open as often as possible, lets more light in. And especially given your small staff, you can run anything by me you need to. For the moment I'm going to head back to the bridge and see what the away team is up to. It was nice to meet you Dr. Torra, let me know whatever else you find."

 

Torra gave a more comfortable nod this time, "I'll be sure to, thanks Dr. Sema'J."

 

As Sam turned to exit sickbay he almost instinctively corrected her with "Sam", but thought better of it…while being on a first name basis with his colleagues and civilian students had produced a great learning environment, Sam was also well aware of what chain of command could do to help provide structure where it was needed. This vast sickbay run by a handful of interns definitely fit that description.

 

"See you later, Doctor," Sam said as he exited into the corridor and headed toward the turbolift.