InGen’s plan to control Dinosaur Population - Lysine Contingency
Amino acids are the basic units of protein where 21 amino acids are commonly required for all life forms. For humans, some amino acids could be synthesized from substrates and these are called non-essential amino acids.
Conditionally essential amino acids are amino acids that could be synthesized under deficiency but requires a catabolic(catabolic means degradation) stress to the body.
An essential amino acid or indispensable amino acid is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized by metabolism and must be consumed by diet. Among the essential amino acid is lysine.
InGen’s chief genetic engineer Henry Wu explains that they control the dinosaur population by limiting the lysine supply.
Although InGen explained that they genetically modified dinosaurs that they cannot synthesize lysine, many vertebrates that is animal with spines cannot synthesize lysine as well so such lysine-deficient genetic modification wouldn’t have been required at the first place.
However, unlike other essential amino acids which aren’t rich in plants, lysine is one of the most abundant amino acids available in plant sources. Legumes are especially highly rich in lysine where a high legume diet would lead to making gallstones.
Thus in reality, the Lysine Contingency plan wouldn’t function properly as lysine is one of the most abundant essential amino acids that are rich in legumes and basically most vertebrate’s metabolism cannot synthesize lysine already but don’t suffer deficiency problems from lysine.
InGen’s plan to control Dinosaur Population – Vertebrates are female by default
The dominant paradigm of sex/gender determination of vertebrates including humans was the default gender of vertebrates is female during the production of Jurassic Park.
InGen planned to control the dinosaur population by genetically modifying all dinosaurs into females based on the theory that all vertebrates are female in default.
However later on in the late 2010’s, it was discovered for humans that the development of a female gender also requires a process. Thus the default gender of human is not female.
This was discovered by the function of a protein COUP-TFII which would function to dispose the wolffian duct that functions as a male organism and contribute to female differentiation. Thus InGen’s original hypothesis that all vertebrates are female in default was wrong.
Also, regardless of the gender determination and differentiation process, many animals were known to change their sex to maintain a feasible male : female ratio.
Animals such as clownfish, seabass, bearded dragons, green frogs, and eels etc could naturally change their gender. Thus, out of InGen’s control dinosaurs would have been able to turn their gender and able to reproduce.
This was depicted in Jurassic Park where Dr. Alan Grant discovers hatched dinosaur eggs that impressed him and reminded him of Dr. Ian Malcolm’s words that “Life Finds a Way”.
DNA and Mosquito Amber Fossil – How dinosaurs were created by InGen – Fictional
InGen explains that the DNA structure of the dinosaurs were extracted from a mosquito amber fossil that would form as the backbone off the dinosaur DNA. InGen has genetically modified the missing parts of the dinosaur DNA backbone with other animal DNA such as frogs, reptiles etc to create the dinosaurs.
DNA stands for DeoxyRibonucleic Acid that forms the genetic library of a living organism. Two DNA strands would form a unit of nucleotide where the polymer of these nucleotides would form the commonly known DNA double helix structure.
The deoxyribonucleic acids that consist of the genetic library are Adenine or A, Thymine or T, Cytosine or C, and Guanine or G. Adenine and Thymine would form a pair nucleotide while Cytosine and Guanine would form a pair nucleotide.
Amber is technically petrified tree resin and often amber also served as a valuable jewel throughout history. Sometimes insects that were residing on trees would be captured by the tree resin and as time flows, the insect carcass would become petrified along with the tree resin and become amber fossils.
InGen explains that mosquito amber fossils would contain dinosaur blood that would contain the DNA of dinosaurs. By extracting the remnants of the DNA, InGen has created dinosaurs. However in reality, it is impossible to extract such dinosaur DNA from such mosquito amber fossil.
DNA and Mosquito Amber Fossil – Why is it impossible to extract dinosaur DNA from a mosquito amber fossil like Jurassic Park
Dinosaurs had hemoglobin as their red blood cell that has a round frisbee like structure. However, hemoglobin red blood cells have this round disk structure with a caved in center because it doesn’t have a nucleus.
The nucleus of a cell contains all the DNA information, thus hemoglobin red blood cells don’t contain DNA. All DNA blood tests actually test the DNA that is in the white blood cells the leukocytes.
Thus, while leukocytes consist of a much smaller proportion of the blood and have a shorter half-life than hemoglobin, it is unlikely to have DNA in the blood of a dinosaur in a mosquito amber fossil 80 million years ago.
Also, DNA has a half-life or shelf-decay with about 521 years. This means that half of the amount of DNA would be degraded over 521 years. By this calculation, after 7 million years, it is impossible for DNA to exist and would be completely destroyed even by the slightest chances.
Thus in reality, the DNA structure to at least make an assumption of the DNA structure of dinosaurs wouldn’t even exist for research. Thus it would be impossible to revive dinosaurs from blood extracted from a mosquito amber fossil like Jurassic Park.
Cloning of Animals in modern science
Animal cloning is also referred as Somatic Cell Nucleus Transfer(SCNT). Somatic cells refers to all the cells that have two sets of chromosomes as a diploid cell except for germ cells which refers to haploid cells required for reproduction that only have one set of chromosomes for reproduction.
The nucleus that contains all the genomic information of an individual animal would be transferred to an unfertilized egg of another surrogate mother to clone animals.
Although by animal cloning an individual animal with the same DNA genetic information could be obtained, most animals cloned by such technology are much weaker than ordinary animals and do not express the exact same phenotypes or traits of the animal that it was clone from.
Having the exact same DNA structure never means that each individual would have the same trait because as much as what kind of DNA is available in the genome of an animal, whether the genetic information is actually expressed and how much is expressed rather determines more of the characteristics of an animal.
Thus, as much as the genomic information, the DNA itself is important, other factors outside of the DNA that controls the expression of DNA is important to determine an animal
Why is it impossible to clone dinosaur DNA
Due to the DNA degradation half-life of about 521years it would be impossible to obtain the complete genome, the genetic information of a dinosaur. Thus, it would be impossible to obtain all the genetic information or the genomic library of a dinosaur.
The amount of information contained by DNA is vast and even with automation, it would be impossible to collect sufficient genetic information to constitute the genome of a dinosaur with available DNA fragments while obtaining such DNA fragments itself would also be almost impossible.
Supposing if a complete genome of a dinosaur is available, creating dinosaurs would be impossible because interpreting or reconstructing dinosaurs from the DNA is an even more impossible task than obtaining the complete DNA structure of a dinosaur.
Organisms aren’t determined solely from the DNA genetic information and they require other proteins, enzymes which are metabolic catalysts and many other factors to properly produce and metabolize the required proteins and other substances that form an organism.
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It is impossible to artificially synthesize some proteins and enzymes while it is also impossible to identify all factors and the corresponding relationships of these factors.
It is even impossible to create a living organism that simply survives due to the complexity of such biological factors in reality by current technology.
Scientists of J. Craig Venture Institute and National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created an artificial single cell organism with 473 genes. (https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/03/scientists-develop-cell-synthetic-genome-grows-and-divides-normally)
Yet, to identify all the proteins, enzymes, metabolites and other substances of an already extinct animal without the even most basic genomic information is basically impossible.
There are many other reasons that would make it impossible to clone dinosaurs such as finding adequate surrogate animal to culture such dinosaur cells if they are even possible to create, creation of the proper protein structure without knowing what kind of protein is required nor without the proper enzymes or adequate tRNA and mRNA information etc.
Thus unlike the hopes and dreams of seeing dinosaurs roaming the earth, it would require the power of the All Mighty to create something from nothing.
