What once started as your standard 10-year Ph.D. project turned into a miracle creation. In a classic mix up, geneticist Varun Johnson from the Human Genome Project research team accidentally mixed his DNA with the mouse DNA that he was attempting to extract and replicate. The result: a 3-hearted, 9-chromosome gnome was created.

CEO Sophie Young was not frazzled by this result.

“Accidents happen all the time,” she said. “Some of the best things were made on accident – post-its, penicillin, you. It only makes sense that gnomes would fall in this same category. We might as well roll with it!”

The expected large cost to rebrand the project turned out to be much cheaper: “All we needed was a really good eraser,” Young said.

However, recent reports in San Mateo are claiming that the gnome project is getting out of hand.

“When we initially designed the cages, we assumed that mice would be in them,” Young said. “The gnomes immediately figured out how to unlock the cage from the inside and began to ‘frolic about’ the lab station. They began to take over the experimentation altogether, pooling their own DNA to create ‘super-gnomes.’”

In an interview last week, Young said “Don’t worry about those super-gnomes, we’ve got them under control.” However, it seemed that Young had had a significant decrease in height since the last interview and was sporting a large red hat.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Contact Jay Maturi at jmaturi ‘at’ stanford.edu.