Disambiguation Links – Lysine Contingency (S/F)
The lysine contingency was intended as a foolproof fall-back plan in Jurassic Park in order to ensure that the animals never left the island: the dinosaurs were specially engineered to lack supplemental enzymes in their diet, and were incapable of producing the amino acid lysine. This meant that, unless they were artificially provided with lysine through their regular diet, they would slip into a comatose state and die.
In the real world, lysine is an essential amino acid, which cannot be naturally produced by most animals; therefore, this contingency plan would not have allowed much of anything to prevent the animals from surviving off the island. There are several items that would sufficiently supply any animals that had escaped with the lysine they needed to survive, including catfish, chickens, soybeans, eggs, kidney beans, and parmesan cheese. Many of these are readily available in nature, and are easily accessible to wild animals, including any dinosaurs which may have escaped from Isla Nublar.
