AGRA 2024
Tauhid Nur Azhar
In the corner of an ancient city, a relic of the Mughal dynasty at its height, I encountered him. A face characterized by the J2 haplogroup.
In human genetics, haplogroup J-M172 or J2 is a Y-chromosome haplogroup that is a subclass of haplogroup J-M304. Haplogroup J-M172 is commonly found in modern Homo sapiens populations in West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southern Europe, Northwestern Iran, and North Africa.
The man clearly possessed the Persian charm that was distinctly reflected in his facial features. The sharpness of his gaze seemed like a surgical scalpel capable of dissecting the depths of a person’s heart.
In silence, leaning against the 16th-century stone wall of the mosque guarding the palace, he deeply inhaled the smoke of his Jambu Bol kretek cigarette. The stone wall he leaned on was a witness to the rise and fall of the Mughal Empire.
The Mughal Empire was an Islamic kingdom established in 1526 CE by its founder, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, after his victory over Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate.
Some of us may be familiar with the Mughals through an iconic architectural heritage site known as the Taj Mahal. It is a beautiful white mausoleum situated in the city of Agra, on the banks of one of the two sacred rivers in India.
The Taj Mahal was built between 1631 and 1653 CE by Emperor Shah Jahan of the Mughal Empire. It stands as an eternal symbol of Emperor Shah Jahan’s love for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child.
Mumtaz Mahal was Shah Jahan’s most beloved third wife. She was intelligent, loyal, and blessed Shah Jahan with brilliant children. She passed away while Shah Jahan was in the Deccan Plateau suppressing a rebellion.
Unable to contain his prolonged grief over the loss of his beloved wife, Shah Jahan expressed his sorrow through a grand gesture of building a mausoleum. It was constructed with the help of 20,000 construction workers, architects, and artists from Persia, Turkey, and Europe. At least 1,000 elephants were used for transporting the building materials alone. The intricate design and unique architectural beauty took more than 11 years to complete.
So, who was Mumtaz Mahal, the woman who captivated the great Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to such an extent?
Mumtaz Mahal’s original name was Arjumand Banu Begum. She was born in Agra in April 1593 CE or 1001 Hijri. Mumtaz was the daughter of Abdul Hasan Asaf Khan and had a familial relationship with her husband.
Mumtaz, the beautiful maiden, was the niece of Queen Nur Jahan, the mother of the emperor and the Empress of the Mughal Empire during Shah Jahan’s reign. She was not only physically beautiful but also had a gentle heart.
Mumtaz Mahal was not only adored by Shah Jahan but also by the entire kingdom, who had fallen in love with her. As the queen, she often shared her wealth with those in need. She was a protector of intellectuals and cultural practitioners. Artists and scholars were not only supported by her but also protected and assisted in their creative pursuits.
It is no wonder that many lyrics and poems of praise were composed for her by poets of her time. She was a woman of noble character, intelligence, and enchanting charm. She was even entrusted with the stamp of royal legitimacy.
So, who was the man at the gate of Agra? Many people speculated, and even more wondered.
His presence was striking. Sometimes he wore a fedora hat, and other times he wore a Pashtun-style turban from the northern mountains of Afghanistan. Many people suspected that he was indeed a Pashtun. The Pashtun people are a unique ethno-linguistic group with the Pastho language who reside in a vast area spanning from the Hindu Kush region in northeastern Afghanistan to the Indus River valley in northern Pakistan.
The Pashtun people adhere strongly to the cultural bond of Pashtunwali, which has become an integral part of their character. Pashtun elders believe that they are descendants of the Afghans and the grandchildren of King Saul of Israel. Some Pashtun tribes are known to have migrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan between the 13th and 16th centuries, and many Pashtun tribes migrated to northern Afghanistan after the formation of modern Afghanistan in the late 19th century.
After two days of meeting, my curiosity grew even stronger. How could a Pashtun casually inhale the smoke of the Parakan-scented cigarettes and the cloves-infused Kudus-style kretek, wrapped in the classic Jambu Bol packaging?
Jambu Bol cigarettes were produced by Haji Roesydi Ma’roef in 1937 in the town of Kretek, Kudus. Jambu Bol was not the first kretek brand. Long before that, there were already renowned names like Nitisemito, with its first factory called Kodok Mangan Ulo, which later became Tjap Bal Tiga.
Kretek, a blend of cloves and sauce on shredded tobacco leaves, is a unique cultural heritage of the Nusantara region. It was introduced as part of the industry when Haji Djamari created a mixture of shredded tobacco leaves and cloves in 1880 to be used as a remedy for his chest pain.
The third encounter with the mysterious Pashtun man took place in front of the Mausoleum mosque. I hardly recognized him because he appeared like a Hollywood secret agent, without a fedora hat or a turban. It made me doubt my genealogical theory. Perhaps he was not a Pashtun after all.
Is he Mossad? Or is he an agent of Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı, or its Turkish counterpart MIT? Or is he an agent of the Verfassungsschutz who suddenly has a special interest and agenda in Agra?
In this era of bio-espionage, what do top agents of secret services do at UNESCO World Heritage sites like this mausoleum?
Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind, perhaps this is indeed a bioespionage operation. An operation to obtain Mumtaz Mahal’s DNA profile. From specimens that have even aged hundreds of millions of years, like the DNA trapped in amber crystals in Michael Crichton’s novel-based film that became so popular that it spawned several sequels, Jurassic Park.
The discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 as a DNA editing tool has made genetic engineering more precise and targeted. Genetic engineering itself is defined as a technique or method used to produce DNA molecules containing desired new genes or combinations of new genes, also known as organism manipulation.
Currently, common methods used in genetic engineering include:
1. Transgenics: a method of introducing genes from one organism into another so that the target organism expresses the traits carried by those genes.
2. Gene editing: a method of specifically modifying certain genes to obtain specific traits or functions from the target organism.
These techniques are widely used in various biotechnology approaches, especially in agro-biotechnology, such as the plasmid technique.
The usual method used in the plasmid technique involves several steps:
1. First, inserting the engineered plasmid into bacterial cells.
2. Then, extracting the plasmid (DNA ring) from the bacterial cells.
3. Next, identifying the desired genes.
4. The following step is to culture the bacteria in a fermentation tube to produce the desired product.
I became anxious with the speculations in my own mind, and many of the questions that arose were mostly rhetorical. “Is this part of the resurgence of the Eugenic Movement in the 21st century?” So questioned my inner self, which suddenly made my stomach feel tight.
What is the eugenic movement? At the beginning of the 20th century, a movement emerged in the United States. This movement was initiated by Francis Galton, a British scientist who believed that the quality of human beings in terms of physical and mental aspects could be improved.
The method is by limiting reproduction among individuals considered to have low quality, such as physical disabilities and mental disorders. However, this practice is not based on solid genetic science and only refers to Mendel’s pea experiments. The practice of eugenics in humans lacks a strong foundation for implementation (Norrgard, 2008).
The direction may no longer be restrictions or limitations on the life opportunities of individuals with non-superior genes, as seen in the genocidal model in Auschwitz during Hitler’s time and the rampant Nazi regime in Europe. Now, the direction can be towards enhancing existing species through genetic engineering.
CRISPR-Cas9 is the most feasible genome editing technology to be applied in the concept of modern eugenics. Especially after this technique was widely discussed following the claim by He Jiankui, a researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology of China, that he successfully edited the embryos of twin babies for the first time in the world. He deactivated the CCR5 gene, which is accommodating to HIV, with the hope of preventing HIV infection in the second embryo of parents who were already infected. He claimed that his research successfully edited the target gene without affecting other genes.
This research shook the world because CRISPR-Cas9 technology was considered to violate medical ethics and was still too early to be applied to the embryonic stage, which could jeopardize the harmony of human species’ survival.
Since the first traces of DNA were detected by Oswald Avery, an immunochemist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research Hospital, in 1944, where he referred to DNA as “the transforming principle” (Cobb, 2014), and later discovered structurally by Watson, Crick, and Rosalind, the breakthrough of CRISPR-Cas9, which learned from the immune system mechanism of bacteria, has had a significant impact on avant-garde research in genetics.
CRISPR itself is a repetitive DNA sequence in bacteria. This technology works when the CRISPR sequence in bacteria functions similarly to the mechanism by which certain bacteria defend themselves against viral attacks. Bacteria can detect the presence of viruses that have previously infected them because of their ability to record viral attacks. With RNA guidance, bacteria send Cas9 proteins to cut the virus-infected DNA. RNA is a cellular component that plays a role in the flow of information between components within a cell (Campbell and Reece, 2005). This cutting process leads to two possibilities: imperfect DNA rejoining, rendering the DNA inactive, or imitation of the surrounding DNA sequence to fill in the cut sequence. In the second possibility, scientists can create their desired model sequence to be imitated by the target DNA (Dance, 2015) (Laras, 2020).
The development of CRISPR-Cas9 technology in the future can be seen from the statement made by Prof. Doudna, one of its inventors, at TED 2015. CRISPR-Cas9 will help realize the dream of creating humans or other living creatures with special and extraordinary features, so they are not only strong and healthy but also intelligent and attractive, free from certain diseases, and some conditions that have long been considered mere dreams.
It is also possible to have transgenic processes by inserting genes from different species, as seen in nature in species such as Elysia Chlorotica, a sea slug that is a marine mollusk of the gastropod type capable of performing kleptoplasty.
Kleptoplasty is a type of symbiotic relationship, or more precisely a subcellular endosymbiotic relationship, with algae of the species Vaucheria litorea, involving the use of their chloroplasts for photosynthesis.
The sea slug Elysia chlorotica can utilize the chloroplast-producing genes from the algae it consumes, earning it the nickname “solar-powered sea slug.” Instead of metabolizing food, it can produce phosphate energy from the sugars it generates through photosynthesis, similar to what happens in plant leaves.
I’m wondering now. Is this agent from Pasthun or Turkey intending to search for Mumtaz Mahal specimens? If so, it would mean they are trying to find an opportunity to gain illegal access to the tomb in the mausoleum.
Couldn’t they search for genetic profiling from Mumtaz’s ancestral genome map? Is it really necessary to obtain a direct specimen from the body of the person whose genes they want to copy? Isn’t the development of AI, especially subsets of machine learning like deep learning and deep neural networks, as well as convolutional neural network models, capable of helping map DNA potential and design synthetic genes to obtain superior traits?
For example, recently I was amazed to see a population of Glodok or Mudskipper fish in the Lemahwungkuk mangrove forest area near the port of Cirebon.
Glodok fish, or periophthalmus, live in a unique habitat, namely the muddy intertidal zone (the estuarine area still influenced by tidal fluctuations), just like the intertidal zone on the coast of Cirebon. One of the criteria for such areas is the presence of a mangrove ecosystem.
Glodok fish have air bubbles near their gills, and their front fins have evolved into locomotive organs on land, allowing them to live on the surface and walk using their front fins.
Biodiversity research in the Bengawan Solo estuary, Ujung Pangkah, which is similar to Cirebon and faces the Java Sea along the northern coast of Java Island, has identified four endemic Glodok fish species: Baleophtalamus boddarti, Baleophtalamus pectinirostris, Periphtalamus chyrospilos, and Pherithalmodon schosseri.
Taxonomically, Glodok fish belong to the Gobiidae family, which consists of various types of fish distributed worldwide and living in marine, estuarine, and freshwater habitats.
The ability of Gobiidae family fish to inhabit different habitats is due to their adaptability to salinity gradients (Khoncara et al., 2018). Because of this adaptability, Glodok fish in Indonesia live in coastal mangrove areas. They use their pectoral fins to crawl onto land or perch on mangrove roots and walk on the dry mud during low tide, hence the name “mudskipper.”
According to Al-Behbehani and Ebrahim (2010), Glodok fish can survive in tidal areas because they have the ability to breathe through their body’s skin and the mucous membrane layers in their mouth and throat.
The Glodok fish, in addition to being known as a mudskipper, is also referred to as a filter feeder because it obtains food by filtering organic materials suspended in the water or deposited in sediments (Dedi Triyanto, 2020).
If the adaptive gene sets of Glodok and Elysia chlorotica could be precisely mapped and inserted into the human genome sequence using CRISPR Cas9 technology, we could potentially obtain an amphibious individual, similar to the Oxidercidae family, capable of living in two realms with the ability to respire through its mucous membrane and skin, as well as survive without food through photosynthesis.
The last time I caught a glimpse of the Persian, Turkish, or Pashtun man was right in front of the magnificent mausoleum building, as he hurriedly walked towards the queue leading to the underground burial chamber. The scent of Jambu Bol kretek cigarettes lingered in the air as he passed through the crowd of hundreds of pilgrims.
I still can’t help but wonder, who is this mysterious man associated with Jambu Bol kretek cigarettes? Surely, he has a close connection to my country, Indonesia. But what exactly is the nature of his presence and what it signifies in Agra, let it remain a part of the mystery that we may discuss at a later time. Provided, of course, that there is additional information for me to delve into.
