Now I'm reading the original book by Michael Crichton, and I found a curious detail about the amino acid lysine. Dr. Wu, the scientist in the book, explains to the characters how the lock system for dinosaurs on the island works. He says, "We don't want them to survive in the wild. So I've made them lysine dependent. I inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. As a result, the animals cannot manufacture the amino acid lysine." Without lysine, these animals just die.

In real life, lysine is an essential amino acid. This means that your body needs lysine for proper healthy functions, such as building proteins, absorbing calcium for bone growth, and lowering cholesterol. But it was really strange—Dr. Wu forgot one detail: actually, animals can get the amino acid from plants, other food, and animals.

In reality, vertebrates do not produce lysine and it is unlikely that dinosaurs would have needed this genetic alteration in the first place. Yeah, this is a really stupid mistake, but I still love the book and the movie!

For this post, I used the article Decoding Dinosaur Genetics in Jurassic Park: The Science Behind Science Fiction. (https://ctsciencecenter.org/blog/decoding-dinosaur-genetics-in-jurassic-parkthe-science-behind-science-fiction/)