Trimethylamine N-oxide
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.05 nm. Stood beside a DNA double helix (2 nm across), it would come about a seventh of the way up.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- TMAO. Also trimethylamine oxide.
- Height
- 0.30 nm, oxygen up. Squat.
- Weight
- 0.12 zeptograms
- Build
- A nitrogen holding three methyl groups and an oxygen.
- Smell
- None. When fish goes off, bacteria turn it into the “fishy” smell.
- Habits
- Holds proteins in shape under crushing pressure. The deeper the fish, the more it keeps.
- Associates
- A snailfish four miles down carries ten times as much.
- Suspected
- Of setting how deep any fish can live: about five miles.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked HADDOCK in the freezer at HQ.
of them in a 6 oz haddock fillet, give or take.
Fish vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Trimethylamine N-oxide, No. 32. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
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