Worm DNA String Dump
- Tough Membrane (Tougher is better!)
- Light Muscles (Could improve flexibility when combined with skeletal system)
- Stubby Pseudopods (If it is better than our current system only)
- Simple Digestive System (If it is better than our current system only)
- Simple Circulatory System (Would help transfer of material from cell to cell)
- Rudimentary Vision (If it is better than our current system only)
- Simple Poison Glands (Why not have an alternative to enzymes?)
- Simple Spines (Toxin Injecting) (See above.)
- Long Body
- Segmented Body (Could improve cell organization.)
- Cartilaginous Skeleton (This could improve stability.)
(( + Anything else you think a simple/medium worm would have. In-between a nematode and fictionally advanced oligochaete or simple polychaete. Those would be the squiggly worms and the bitey hardish-shelled worms. ))
Assimilate the bolded DNA.
Italiced DNA is to be considered.
Tough membrane is nice, but keep our current membrane knowledge, our membranes may have very specific requirements so acquiring as many samples as possible seems valid.
Muscles... they are sort of vulnerable, snip them anywhere along their length and they are likely to rip themselves apart if they are used. I would rather work on something involving individual cells rapidly adjusting their volume, crystallisation could be useful for this task.
I like stubby pseudopods, they would make a good mount for spikes and flagella. Just stick a flagella to one end, a spike to the other, and mount it on bed that crystallises over to sever the thing and we have an instant torpedo. Add a simple visual receptor and we could guide it to a target using a laser...
Digestive tract... I would rather not, it is just so boring...
Circulatory system? Definite big-no! We are going to transfer energy via internal lasers and maintain perfect efficiency with regard to waste-products. A circulatory system would just leave messy vestigial slivers strewn across our mass.
The vision is likely to have a different spectrum from ours, grab it and add it to what we already have, but maintain it in separate eyes so that we have redundancy against light-based threats.
Better to master enzymes than dabble in poison, but meh.
Toxin spines: Definitely, see the stubby pseudopods entry.
Long body should be easy enough to replicate later, and for now it would be awkward and exposed.
Segments... See above. It is a nice idea, but would complicate things in ways that we really don't care about at the moment.
Skeleton, definitely not, if we need a skeleton, we will have cells for a crystal shell. It will be easier to repair or adjust and can form complex rigid shapes that will be useful for our pressure-based kinetic system...