As mentioned above, the aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the EBO genome and proteome. To achieve this, a team of around twenty scientists, four senior scientists and a director was involved. The scientists, like myself, had as their main responsibility to carry out the technical work. As each scientist had to my knowledge a Ph.D., we were all somewhat overqualified for what is ultimately a technician's job. The senior scientists, who make full use of their diplomas, had the task of designing the assays and had a supervisory responsibility. They were also in charge of training new employees, and sometimes even came in to do technical work. The director, of course, was the person in charge who dictated priorities to the senior scientists. He was rarely on site, and the few times he was, it was to attend meetings. Other than the scientific staff, there were security guards working for one subcontractor or another. There were no support staff such as janitors or maintenance workers. Scientists were responsible for this kind of work. In addition, logistical constraints ensure that every scientist is capable of carrying out any technical activity.
The laboratory itself is located in Fort Detrick, Maryland, in a building used for legitimate biomedical research. The clandestine operations are carried out in a restricted part of the basement, out of sight from regular workers. Contrary to what one might imagine, the biosafety level is not maximal for this type of research. Indeed, the lab containing EBO samples or derived cell cultures is BSL3, while the lab where assays are conducted are only BSL2. The BSL3 area of the facility includes a freezer room and a cell culture lab and is only accessible through an antechamber from the BSL2 section. EBO carcasses are preserved in horizontal freezers at a temperature of -80°C nominal. To maximize the preservation of these carcasses, they are preserved in vacuum bags and the air in the room is controlled to minimize humidity. There are only four bodies and none of them are complete. It's obvious that these creatures have died as a result of major trauma. I've never witnessed a motorcycle accident fatality, but it probably looks similar to this. It is acknowledged that there are more EBOs caracasses at other locations. The cell culture laboratory, as its name suggests, is where cell lines derived from EBOs are grown and related activities are performed. I'll talk in more detail about these specific cell lines later on. The BSL2 part is mainly used for assays, immunohistochemistry, genetic engineering, immunocytochemistry, storage etc. There's also a cell culture lab, but this is used for more traditional cell lines. Other than the labs, there are all the amenities you could find in an office. Note that the internet access is limited to senior staff and up. There is, however, an intranet for bioinformatics needs.
On the subject of the biology of these beings, I'll start by discussing genetics, then their gross anatomy and finally their biological systems. For the sake of clarity, the information that I provide here is an aggregation of what I have observed and what I have read. I will make many comparisons with human anatomy because it is the most logical reference.
Genetics:
First, I'd like to discuss their genetics. Their genetics are like ours, based on DNA. This fact was very puzzling for me when I first learned about it. We imagine that beings from an alternate biosphere would have genetics based on a completely foreign biochemical system and surprisingly, this is not the case. Several conclusions can be drawn from this surprising revelation. The one that immediately comes to mind is that our biosphere and theirs share a common ancestry. They're eukaryotes, which means their cells have nuclei containing genetic material. Which suggests that their biosphere would have been separated from ours sometime after the appearance of this type of organism. The term Exo-Biospheric-Organism is actually a misnomer, but as it's a historical term, it's still used. Their genetics are not only based on the same genetic system, but they’re also even compatible with our own cellular machinery. This means that you can take a human gene and insert it into an EBO cell, and that gene will be translated into protein, and this of course works in reverse with a human gene inserted into an EBO cell. There are important differences in post-translational modifications that will make the final protein non-functional, but I'll discuss these later. Their genome consists of 16 circular chromosomes.
You're probably familiar with the concept of intergenic region or "junk DNA". These are basically DNA sequences that don't code for proteins. These are evolutionary residues, transposons, inactivated genes and so on. To give you an idea, in humans, intergenic regions represent approximately 99% of our genome. I'm aware that these sequences aren't completely useless, they can be used as histone anchors, as buffers to protect coding DNA from radiation or even as alternative open reading frames, but that's rather peripheral.
What's particularly striking about the EBO genome is the uniformity of these intergenic regions. We see the same sequences repeated everywhere, and the distance in bp between the genes is virtually the same throughout their genome. The result is a minimalist, highly condensed genome. In fact, it's much smaller than ours. Moreover, the quantity of protein-coding genes is even significantly lower than ours, probably due to genetic refinement but also to biological processes that are absent in EBO. The uniformity of these sequences is a major indication of the artificiality of these beings. There is no complex organism on earth that has such elegance in its sequences. There is no evolutionary pressure that can lead to this kind of characteristic other than genetic engineering.
Speaking of genetic engineering, following sequencing of their genomes, we noticed a troubling and universal characteristic in the 5' of the regulatory sequence of each gene which we call the Tri-Palindromic Region. The TPR are 134bp sequences containing, as its name suggests, 3 palindromes. In genetics, a palindrome is a DNA sequence that when read in the same direction, gives the same sequence on both DNA strands. They serve both as a flag and as a binding site for proteins. The three palindromes in the TPR are distinct from one another and have been poetically named "5'P TPR", "M TPR" and "3' TPR". The TPR is composed (in 5' - 3' order) of 5'P TPR, 12bp spacer, Chromosomal address, 12bp spacer, M TPR, 12bp spacer, Gene address, 12pb spacer and 3' TPR. The chromosomal address is composed of 4 bp and is identical in each TPR of the same chromosome, but distinct between each of the 16 chromosomes of the genome. The Gene address is a 64bp sequence that is unique for each gene in the whole genome. It's therefore understandable that the TPR serves as a unique address not only for numerically identifying a gene, but also for identifying its chromosomal location. For those with only a basic knowledge of genetics, this is completely unheard of. No living thing in our biosphere has this kind of precise address in its genome. Once again, the presence of TPR cannot be explained by evolutionary pressure but only by genetic engineering on a genomic scale.
TPR opens the door to several possibilities. One of them suggests that EBO geneticists can insert or remove a gene from a cell in a way that is far more targeted and efficient than our technology allows. No proteins have been identified in the EBO genome that interacts with TPR. Rather, we believe that these proteins are exclusively targeted by external genetic engineering tools, probably used at the zygotic stage of embryonic development. The nature of these tools is unclear, but we definitely don't have anything like them. The probable absence of these proteins from the genome is a further indication of their artificiality. Given the high probability of artificiality of their genome and the apparent ease of modifying it with biomolecular tools, it's not out of the question that there could be polymorphism between individuals depending on their role and function. In other words, an individual could be genetically designed to have characteristics that give it an advantage in performing a given task, like soldier ants and worker ants in an anthill. Note that these previous statements are speculation. To my knowledge only one individual genome has been sequenced, I can't make a definitive statement on genetic variation between individuals.
I've talked a lot about intergenic regions, now I'll briefly discuss intragenic sequences. Briefly, because there's not a lot less to say despite its obvious importance. Much like ours, their genes have silencers, enhancers, promoters, 5'UTRs, exons, introns, 3' UTRs etc. There are many genes analogous to ours, which is not surprising given the compatibility of our cellular machinery. What's disturbing is that some genes correspond directly, nucleotide by nucleotide, with known human genes or even some animal genes. For these genes, there doesn't seem to be any artificial refinement but rather a crude copying and pasting. Why they do it is nebulous and still subject to conjecture. There are also many genes which are not found in our biosphere whose role has not been identified. Finding the purpose of these novel genes is one of the aims of the program. I'd like to note before going any further that this heterogeneity of genes of known and unknown origin is an undeniable proof of the artificiality of EBOs.
To conclude with genetics, the mitochondrial genome, at the time I was working there, had not yet been sequenced. It's safe to assume that this genome would also be streamlined and possibly has some version of TPR.