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Parasite Eve

The English edition of Parasite Eve.
Author	Hideaki Sena
Original title	Parasaito Ibu
Translator	Tyran Grillo
Cover artist	Chip Kidd
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre(s)	Science fiction, Horror novel
Publisher	Vertical, Inc., (New York)
Publication date	1995
Published in English	2005
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	319 pp
ISBN	ISBN 1-932234-19-5

Parasite Eve is the name of a Japanese novel by Hideaki Sena, first published in Kadokawa Horror Bunko, which has been adapted into a 1997 film and a 1998 video game for the Sony PlayStation by Squaresoft. A sequel to the game was released in 1999, also for the PlayStation.

The story of the novel revolves around a geneticist whose research in mitochondria causes him to take extreme measures to revive his wife, and eventually leads to the creation of a new threat to all mankind. The scientific basis for the story is the endosymbiotic theory: mitochondria were originally free-living bacteria, which coevolved with host cells to become mutually interdependent. The fictional premise is that mitochondria are able to rebel and to develop unusual capabilities. In addition, scientists traced mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited matrilineally, to a single woman in Africa. They dubbed her "Mitochondrial Eve." This report appeared in "Nature" in 1987.

The novel opens with Kiyomi Nagishima, wife of geneticist Toshiaki Nagashima, as she is suddenly blinded while driving. When she regains her eyesight, her car is headed for collision with a telephone pole.

At work, Toshiaki, who has been experimenting with liver cultures, finds out that his wife has had an accident, and goes to the hospital. His wife is brain-dead, and a year prior, had signed up to be a kidney donor. He agrees to donate her kidneys, but only if in exchange he receives a liver culture. A presence, identifying itself as "Her" or "She", reveals itself and that it sparked the idea for Toshiaki to ask for the liver.

Meanwhile, Mariko Anzai, a young teenager who received a failed kidney transplant from her father, is told to prepare for surgery. Takashi Yoshizumi, the transplant surgeon, briefly meets Toshiaki, and experiences a hot flash. After removing Kiyomi's kidneys, he heads to the hospital where Anzai is awaiting a transplant. While replacing one of Anzai's kidneys, he experiences yet another hot flash. Toshiaki receives the liver culture and rushes to contain his wife's cells, and is enthralled at the life within them. The presence reflects on its long life, an eyeblink of which involved Kiyomi, and it wonders whether it is in love with Kiyomi's widower.

Anzai becomes withdrawn the entire time she is in the hospital, and has frequent dreams involving the kidney's "true" owner entering her room to claim it. She distances herself from her father and Yoshizumi.

Toshiaki continues his experiments on the kidney cultures, including additives that will speed up its already rapid growth. He has his assistant, a graduate student, also study the cells. His assistant, who has a presentation coming up, sacrifices time to the culture, the presence within being Mitochondrial Eve.

Via flashbacks, Eve reveals (to the reader) that she has long influenced Kiyomi's life, and how it used its powers to increase Kiyomi's attractiveness to Toshiaki. Among its manipulations are that it can possess Kiyomi, leading her to do things that she can't recall, and one of these is that it has her sign up to be a kidney donor. Kiyomi gradually realizes that she is being possessed when Toshiaki comes to her with a donor release form for her kidneys.

Late one night, Eve possesses Toshiaki's assistant, and at her presentation, reveals itself by saying that the mitochondria are done with humanity, who will make way for a new lifeform. It ignites the assistant, although she isn't badly burned, and it dissolves. A shaken Toshiaki goes back to the research facility, and the Eve culture has formed itself into a likeness of Kiyomi, although it has the smell of the cellular additives.

Eve forces sex on Toshiaki, and it flees with his sperm. He realizes it wants Kiyomi's organ donor, so he goes to the hospital and luckily runs into Anzai's father. Meanwhile, Eve uses her powers to induce spontaneous combustion in all that oppose her, but she leaves Yoshizumi alive. Toshiaki theorizes the mitochondria vibrate at increased speed, and ignite, to explain the combustion ability.

The disintegrating Eve takes the young Anzai to the morgue, and impregnates her with Toshiaki's sperm. The pregnancy cycle occurs in minutes due to the new lifeform, and Anzai gives birth as Toshiaki, Yoshizumi, and her father arrive. Eve plans for this new creation to herald the end of humanity and Earth's domination by a better suited lifeform. She rapidly deteriorates into only a head, as the baby is born, which she dubs Eve, like herself.

The newborn Eve attacks the men using telekinesis and slamming them into walls, but suddenly it agonizingly shifts into a male before it can kill any of the men or the younger Anzai. The mitochondrial Eve is confused by this, but she dies. Toshiaki realizes that the mother did not account for the male chromosome, and the newborn Eve morphs between the two genders. He tells it to come to him, as he is its father, and no child should die alone. He has a feeling of greatness, of what mankind could become, and dies. Afterwards, the father asks for the medical team to let his carcass' hand touch his luckily surviving daughter's kidney, because it seemed he was reaching for it. He thinks he sees a smile on the ruined face.

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

In reality, most of the original mitochondrial genome has been lost or transferred to the host cell nucleus, so their evolutionary potential is actually very limited, which is how it was possible to develop the molecular clock required to approximate when the “mitochondrial Eve” would have lived. The concept of a “mitochondrial Eve” is in itself misleading since there was no single woman who was the “mitochondrial Eve”. The “mitochondrial Eve” is actually a small number of closely related individuals who survived a population bottleneck, so all humans are descended from this mitochondrial population. The genesis of the mitochondria was not in humans but in a species thought to be similar to protozoa (see mitochondrion). Regardless, mitochondria cannot survive without the constant supply of biomolecules and environment provided by the host cell. While mitochondria are linked to certain diseases and cell death, they can not “rebel”. Also, the concept of rebellion implies conscious action, and even under the most generous terms mitochondria would not be attributed with the level of intelligence required for rebellion, much less the fantastic powers they have in Parasite Eve/The last lifeform.

Main article: Parasite Eve series#Movie

The novel was adapted into a film, which was released on Region 1 DVD at least.

Main article: Parasite Eve (series)#Video games

A sequel to the novel appeared in the form of the Square Action RPG Parasite Eve, along with one sequel and a spinoff mobile game.