Lysine contingency

The Lysine contingency was a genetic alteration Henry Wu performed in the dinosaur genome. The modification knocked out the ability of the dinosaurs to produce the amino acid Lysine. This forced the dinosaurs to depend on lysine supplements provided by the park's veterinary staff. In this way dinosaurs could never escape from the park because they would never survive long without the food supplements.

In reality this would be either impossible and useless. Non of the vertebrates (or other animal phyla) can produce Lysine, making it an essential amino acid. All animals (including humans) can survive simply by having a lysine rich diet.

Because all known animals lack the ability to produce Lysine, it's unlikely that dinosaurs had. But if they had a pathway for lysine synthesis it would have been like the pathway in plants. Essential enzymes involved in this biosynthesis pathway are:


 * Aspartokinase
 * β-aspartate semialdehyde dehydrogenase
 * Dihydropicolinate synthase
 * Δ1-piperidine-2,6-dicarboxylate dehydrogenase
 * N-succinyl-2-amino-6ketopimelate synthase
 * Succinyl diaminopimelate aminotransferase
 * Succinyl diaminopimelate desuccinylase
 * Diaminopimelate epimerase
 * Diaminopimelate decarboxylase.

If Henry Wu wanted to make the dinosaurs Lysine defauld he could have mutated the gene or genes that coded for one of these enzymes.

In the novel and movie dinosaurs survive the Lysine contingency by eating Lysine rich food, like chickens or soya beans. And carnivores could aquire Lysine by eating herbivores.

Links

 * Lysine on Wikipedia
 * Biological issues in Jurassic Park