Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Pressure-Based (Vacuum/Hydraulic)

Filaments (Standard)

[NRDL]

I think enzymes are just essentially chemical reactions or triggers that result in some sort of effect, which could be good or bad, depending on what it does.  An enzyme that produces blood vessels is good, an enzyme that causes a certain liquid to melt the fat of your enemy is bad ( for your enemy ). 

Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

[Argonnek]

Is there some way we could utilize chlorine? As I understand it, it's something of an anti-life chemical.

[NRDL]

For a variety of species, I guess it would be toxic.  It isn't the anti-life chemical, I'm sure some species can survive being doused in raw chlorine.  I don't think Vitascinti Basus is one of them. 

[RAM]

Chlorine is an oxidising agent, it tends to be dangerous to things that use oxygen...

I prefer sodium...

[NRDL]

We're going to be a salt monster now? 

[RAM]

We are going to have enzymes that extract pure sodium from salt and maintain it in a safety gel until we inflict it upon someone else...

[Ibid Straydrink]

We're going to be a salt monster now?

An amorphous walking salt tree that secretes corrosive enzymes and does acid, to be specific.

[RAM]

Most of the people around us are made of water. Adding sodium to them would turn them into salt. Possibly very finely dispersed salt...

I do believe that we are all in support of developing an enzyme that separates table salt into pure elements. Some of us feel that this should be done carefully...

[Tidal]

Provided, you need to find NaCl first.

Edit: Of course, you do live in a semi-salty environment, so you should only need to somehow extract it from the seawater.

So I take it your plan is to inject things with salt and murder them via osmosis?

[ashton1993]

Wait, wait, wait a sec... we intend to utilize salt and muck with the water saturation in enemy cells thus making them either explode or shrivel to death... has anyone thought that us having a cell wall makes us ultra vulnerable to screwing with osmosis? Being able to create acids has merit (acidty is basically measured in concentration of positive hydrogen ions which bond with anything and cause whatever it bonds with on a molecular scale to separate.) could be quite handy if we just want to attack they're membrane... if we're talking about enzymes well we'll need specific enzymes for each type of cell we attack and a way to inject them but once they've reached the innards of the cell they could do all manner of stuff to the cell: replicate like a virus, stop the cell functioning, consume the cell from the inside, so a brief summary:

Salt
Pro: Can make cells explode or shrivel up
Con: Can do the same to us (especially because we have a cell wall)

Acid
Pro: Easy to do, little risk or energy needed
Con: Only damages the surface and does minimal damage

Enzymes
Pro: Extremely effective, depending on how complex they are they could even control an enemy cell
Con: Very hard to utilize requiring injection and a new enzyme for each enemy species you encounter

I vote salt for now and later move onto enzymes

[Armok]

The enzymes might synergize well with the data processing organelle if we do things right!

[Tidal]

You wouldn't need new enzymes for every species- just for a different task. For instance, you would need a multitude to accomplish a single task, which is the problem. One that eats away calcium or silicon to get through a cell's shell, another that opens the membrane, and yet another that denatures/breaks down proteins.

I don't know how you would keep the salt in your cell safely, but separating the chlorine and sodium is a possibility. Chlorine may be hard to use, but sodium could be stored in an oily vacuole and sent over to another cell.

In the long run, the salt thing would only be effective at a lower complexity scale. Of course, many creatures use enzymes as a poison. For example, I know of one paired-enzyme toxin that is extremely effective at what it does. The first enzyme actually clamps on to the cell's membrane and opens it up to its buddy. The second then uses the first to go inside. It then proceeds to shut down the cell's ribosomes. It is incredibly deadly and has no cure. Of course, it kills slowly and painfully; it wouldn't be useful for us to use this kind.

Salt could be used later on... maybe spewing chlorine or sodium.

[ashton1993]

When I said one species I was probably being a bit over-specific, but if your enzymes are designed to do action H but a cell is composed of material D it's not going to work out unless they're compatible.

[Tidal]

Exactly, but most cells tend to have the same membrane coating.

Also, the thing I was talking about was actually a lestin (a type of protein), not an enzyme.

It's called abrin.

Abrin works by penetrating the cells of the body and inhibiting cell protein synthesis. By attaching to a carbohydrate chain on the cell surface, the abrin molecule anchors itself to the cell, is subsequently engulfed and enters the inner parts of the cell where it reacts with a ribosomal subunit and interferes with the normal protein synthesis process of the cell. Without these proteins, cells cannot survive. This is harmful to the human body and will be fatal. The severity of the effects of Abrin poisoning vary on the means of exposure to the substance (whether inhaled, ingested, or injected).

[kaian-a-coel]

I vote enzyms. Something that simply MUNCH OUT the enemy's membrane, so all his organite will ridiculously spill out in the water, ready to be eaten.