Tryptophan
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. A dime is about one and a half million times thicker.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Tryptophan. Trp, or W, to biochemists.
- Height
- 0.87 nm, standing on end.
- Weight
- 0.34 zeptograms
- Build
- Two rings on a short leg. Heaviest of protein’s twenty building blocks.
- Marks
- Glows, but only in ultraviolet. Nobody notices.
- Habits
- Rarest of the twenty: one protein letter in ninety.
- Suspected
- Of the Thanksgiving nap. Chicken has more, and nobody blames chicken.
- First seen
- In milk protein digested by an enzyme. Named after the enzyme.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked TURKEY in the fridge at HQ.
of them in 3 oz of roast turkey, nearly all built into its protein.
You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Tryptophan, No. 35. 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.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.