The Alicorn Project was saved from certain death. It then moved its focus from magical transformation to synthetic genetic replication and engineering. The original idea was to try to clone the princesses, but most of the nobles funding the project found it morally detestable. They refused to fund the cloning project and insisted on an alternative. After discussing the other options with the scientists, they proposed that take DNA samples from the princesses and isolate the supposed alicorn gene and try to replicate it.

Once the gene is replicated, they'll introduce it into an egg cell. The nobles proposed that the project tries a charitable approach. The project will find mares that have romantic partners and wish to have foals, but have deficient ovaries and are unable to produce egg cells. They'll make a synthetic egg cell from the mare's DNA and will introduce the mare's romantic partner's sperm cells to the egg, effectively making the couple's own foal. Then the scientists will put the alicorn gene in place of the other pony (earth, pegasus, unicorn) gene and pray to Larson that the mare becomes pregnant with the new alicorn.

Some of the scientists argued that the process is overly complicated and runs a high risk of failure. For starters, the couple must have a barren mare that has a fertile partner and must not have any genetic diseases. The couple must also be willing to keep the secret and to top it off, be in favor of the project's cause. Isolating the possible alicorn gene is much more work than simply replicating the entire genome. The pony genome has yet to be fully mapped and it's still one of the biggest ongoing research fields in biology. Without such a map, locating an alicorn gene, if it exists, can take months if not years. Then there's creating a synthetic egg cell. Most genetic engineering involves a natural egg cell. The technology just simply wasn't there yet.

However, if the project was to continue receive funding, those were the conditions they must abide by. They did strike a bit of luck when they managed to find fifty couples that fit. That was of course fifty more than they thought they can get to volunteer. To find the gene that determines the kind pony, they collected DNA from the volunteers and their colleagues. They scanned the entire genome to locate what each of the genes each kind of pony share each other. The hope was that the gene is in the same place on the chromosome so when looking at the princesses DNA, they would find the alicorn gene much easier, if it exists.

They did find the gene on the same chromosome in a couple months. On a side note, they found that the earth pony trait is dominant to the others, followed by the unicorn trait by observing that earth ponies having the gene for earth pony on one of their alleles and one of kinds of pony on the other allele. The pegasus trait is recessive to each of them. Due to its rarity, it can be assumed that the bat pony trait is recessive to the others, but the scientists were unable to study that. If the alicorn gene is real, it's unknown whether or not the trait is dominant or recessive, but both of the donated alleles will be modified to have the gene to make up both alleles.

With that figured out, the scientists needed to create synthetic egg cells. They decided to try to speed up the process with magic. They figured that since they're working with phospholipids and proteins to make the cell structure rather than delicate DNA, they believed that they can work with such small material with their magic. Once they created the structure to the cell, they put the separated allele from the mare volunteers into the artificial nucleus. It took several tries, but they finally came up with a working gamete cell. Once they get the alicorn gene, they'll then introduce the partner's sperm and inject the alicorn gene into the alleles to alter the chromosome.

The plan was set. First, the scientists needed a DNA sample from each of the princesses. The most obvious way to collect their sample is hair. The ponies they hired to steal artifacts from museums or private collections were hired again to take hair from Twilight and Cadance's mane brushes, but Celestia and Luna have an unusual kind of mane. It's believed that their manes never need to be brushed and don't shed off. It's best to gather samples from all four princesses to help with the isolating the gene.

So the scientists needed something else. They went with the next best thing, feathers. They knew that the princesses molt their feathers as pegisi do. The molted feathers are swept up by the cleaning staff at the castle and burned as an easy way to rid of them. So all they needed was to get the feathers from a maid. Something a bag of bits handled quite well.

With hair and feather samples from the four princesses, they were scanned for the gene that they should have that nopony else should have. Twilight's DNA came up as a normal unicorn's, but that was attributed to the fact she was magically transformed into her form. The other three did have an unrecognized gene in place of the other observed ponies. The alicorn gene was real and thank Larson they had found it.

More synthetic egg cells were made. They were then fertilized and the copies of the alicorn gene was inserted into them. Each of the fifty volunteer mares were inseminated. The scientists knew that only a few would result pregnancy. The rest would either be rejected by the mare's body or fail to implant itself to the uterine walls. The hope was that at least one would succeed, but they needed to wait for more than twenty four hours to check to see if it was worth it. Next Chapter: Present Day: The Results Estimated time remaining: 14 Minutes