AT-5 Blood Molecule Composition
In Molly's website, there's a picture of what is supposedly the chemical composition of the blood that fills the AT-5 moon's ocean.
The screen quality is, as always, pretty bad, but you can actually see the structure of the molecule rather well. Or, well enough to identify some of what's going on.
So, firstly - the text says it "mimics molecular structure of human blood hemoglobin". This is visible on this molecule - the heme molecule is right there in the middle. Here's my (yes, handwritten) copy of the molecule (I tried my best to copy it as faithfully as I could)
In this diagram, you can see the heme molecule smack dab in the middle of the AT-5 hemoglobin molecule. The interesting part is the two other molecules that are bonded to the heme molecule (with impossible bonds, mind you) - the C17H19N7O2 molecule on the left, which isn't similar to any sort of known molecule as far as I can tell; and the C11H22N2O6 molecule on the right, which, while not an exact match... is very, very close to a disaccharide.
Just for posteriority (and if anyone else that's better at orgchem than I am wants to try to figure it out): the SMILES codes for both molecules are:
CNC(=O)C(CC1=CC=CC=CC1)NC(=O)CN1C=NC2=C(N)N=CN=C12
Right molecule (disaccharide-esque):
CCNC(C)C(=O)NC1C(O)OC(CO)C(O)C1O
So. I can't really say anything about what the left molecule is doing here, since... there's nothing else like it. But I can talk about the right molecule.
Like I said, it's not an exact match - but this molecule is very close to nitrogen-containing D-saccharides, 'aka' amino sugars. I compared this mystery molecule to the RCSB database and got a few options - all of them similarly close to our mystery molecule, with the only differences being certain parts being depicted specifically in a 3d space, which our diagram does not do. I selected a few that seemed to make some sort of sense.
One option is N-Acetyltalosaminuronic acid, which is an amino sugar present in the cell walls of certain Archaebacteria. I find this one a bit unlikely, but it could be something to do with the alien nature of it all - the Archaea domain is the farthest from humans, after all.
Another option is N-Acetylglucosamine, which is a very widespread amino sugar, that composes certain bacterial cell walls, is one of the molecules that composes chitin (which is interesting), can form hyaluronic acid (which is also interesting), and (even more interesting) has been proposed as a treatment for autoimmune diseases.
The other option I found was N-Acetylgalactosamine, which is funnily enough very on theme - it is the terminal carbohydrate forming the antigen of the human blood group A. Which means that if we go by this option, the blood ocean is composed of exclusively type B or O blood, for some reason?? It is also a big part of intercellular communication, and it's concentrated on the sensory structures of animals. There's also been a few studies trying to explore the correlation between this molecule and the immune system in general.
Two of the options can be about the immune system. The description of the effects of this alien hemoglobin talks about "promoting rapid lysing followed by uncontrollable stem cell growth". I wonder if it also has an immunosuppressant effect as well, to kickstart the mutation process - the immune system is the one that culls cancerous cells, after all... which brings us to the next image in Molly's website.
This is pure speculation at this point, but... I think the blood cells of the AT-5 ocean act as like... a reverse virus. Not "injecting" their DNA into other cells, but instead, like... "sucking" it out? The cells it comes into contact with mutate back into stem cells, which are biology's "clean slate". I can't help but think it's some sort of "removal of individuality" of your biology to create something new - a collective of sorts. An eel made of human body parts, an oceans-worth of human blood.
The real question is. After all of that. After you've been striped clean of your genetics and fully assimilated into the blood. Do you die? Or are you still there, conscious?
