Fringe S2E14 (2010) Part I - "He Can Program the Toxin to Target Whatever Group He Likes"

Spoiler Level – Low (series); moderate (episode)

The Show – An FBI agent teams up with a pair of brilliant but eccentric scientists to solve crimes that conventional science can't explain.

As much as I like to complain about this show (and I really really do), I was a fan of it and enjoyed watching it right up to its end last month. But some of the science is just horrible, and a major aspect of the show is blurring the line between legitimate science and pseudoscience. So I can't feel comfortable supporting such a show without publicly addressing the problems.

Which of these topics are real and which are total garbage? We obscure. You decide. From Fringe.

The Scene – At a wedding, the groom's (Jewish) family suddenly begins to suffocate, while the (gentile) bride's family is okay. Later, at a coffee shop, all the brown-eyed people die the same way, but everyone else is unharmed.

The scientists isolate the toxin that's responsible and study it. It can become airborne when exposed to a heat source. Then everyone in the area is exposed to it, but the toxin recognizes certain genetic traits and only kills people with those traits. Inside the target host, the toxin binds a protein called hemoglobin, depriving the body of oxygen and turning the blood blue. Turns out it was all an old Nazi plot to create the perfect race through "process of elimination."

I like this episode because it has some good science mixed with the bad. It even connects to two areas of research that I've personally studied. Today, I'll talk about what the episode got right, and surprisingly enough that includes some of the biggest points. 

The Science – This is an interesting topic. The idea that evil scientists could create a toxin specific to people with a certain genetic feature is intriguing, and it's not too far off from legitimate scientific pursuits. I like to give shows the benefit of the doubt, so here are some things that are possible.

Let's start with the toxin's mechanism. Hemoglobin is the protein in our blood that carries oxygen. The protein contains iron, which makes our blood red and is necessary for the transport of oxygen. A compound which could remove the iron from hemoglobin would both affect the color of blood and result in suffocation due to the inability to move oxygen around our body. So far, so good.

Now let's talk about genetic differences. Generally, all people have the same genes. We just have different versions of them. For instance, the two main genes responsible for eye color are OCA2 and HERC2. A blue-eyed person and a brown-eyed person each have copies of both genes, but the specific DNA sequence slightly differs. We call different versions of the same gene alleles.

Which eye color do you want for your master race? Consult your local insane Nazi bioengineer today! From Wikimedia Commons.

So a toxin that only targets a specific genetic group would need a way to recognize the subtle DNA differences between alleles. This is possible. There are proteins that recognize highly specific sequences of DNA, and engineering proteins to recognize new sequences is an active area of research today. I once worked in that field even.

Further, there are proteins that have active and inactive states, and the regulation of these states depends on what other molecules are around. It's perfectly possible to have a toxin that is completely inactive until it encounters a certain sequence of DNA. Then when the regulatory part of the domain interacts with that DNA, it activates the toxic domain. In this way, you could expose everyone to a certain toxin but only kill a given group or even a specific person.

There are less malevolent reasons for designing such toxins. Cancer is caused by mutations to our DNA that change a normal healthy allele into one that allows certain cells to grow out of control and harm the rest of the body. But what if it were possible to make a toxic protein that only recognizes the altered alleles in cancer cells? Tumor cells could be killed without any collateral damage to healthy ones. Like many technologies, the idea could be used for good or evil.

Fixing the scene – Well, so far I haven't really described anything wrong with this episode. A protein that is only toxic upon recognizing alleles specific to a given group of people is possible. The technology isn't quite here yet, but that's the kind of stretching I expect from my science fiction. (Saying the Nazis already had the technology in the 1940's is pushing it, but whatever.) However, it takes more than what I've described to turn a toxin into a bioterrorism weapon. It'll take me another week or two to go through those problems.

Next Week – I'll continue discussing this episode so that we can discover where the depiction of this toxin went wrong.