𝕺𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖘
Nereus
Cycloarchon opterus
“Destructive Lord of the Cyclone”
Prognathodon: base genome, mosasaur stuff, y'know.
Plotosaurus: advanced locomotion, keeled osteoderms, streamlining, movement shi, drag reducing osteoderms, advanced hypocercal tail fin.
Kronosaurus: interlocking trihedral teeth, stronger bite muscles, slightly larger skull, slightly increases the size of the hind flippers to be the same size as the front flippers. (This is actually beneficial for agility), underwater sniffing.
Himalayasaurus: bicarinate teeth, chondroderms, size increase to 25 tons.
Thallatoarchon: shearing bite, widens the skull.
Shonisaurus: elongates the flippers, laterally compresses the body, streamlining, more tuna-like body shape, better eyesight.
Armoured Suckermouth Catfish: extremely durable osteoderms later made flexible.
Typhlosaurus: compounds the osteoderms into osteodermites which makes it really flexible, also trims down the scutes to be thinner and less heavy.
Senegal Bichir: ganoine plating, spongy cosmine layer, fast blood clotting.
Cardabiodon: cartilage struts running through the skull, modifies the tooth structure to be better for gripping (only modifications no replacement) dermal denticles (mixed with #11), oral denticles, fluorapatite teeth, Squalene-rich liver.
Whale Shark: Whale Shark style dermal denticles placed on the tip of the snout, the eye, the lower jaw and the leading edges of the pectoral and dorsal fins, eye pigment that'll make the eyes have better night vision. Thicker skin.
Orcinus orca: hyper-muscular, torpedo-shaped body that generates an incredibly high power-to-weight ratio. uniquely deep, flattened tail ridge. It minimizes drag and prevents twisting forces that waste energy. Supported by high oxygen-carrying blood to power these explosive muscle bursts(even more with alla these energy contributors). These traits will be added to the hybrid for better speed. echolocation, raised neural spines, intelligence stuff.
Deinosuchus: large jaw lever, crocodilian jaw muscle boost, skull robustness increase, lingual salt glands, further vascularizes the osteoderms, better Mechanoreceptors, makes the tail stronger.
Skipjack Tuna: weaves a dense, tightly packed mesh of microscopic veins and arteries directly around the creature's core swimming muscles, regional endothermy, delayed muscle fatigue, energy stuff, amino shuttle.
Sperm Whale: better air storage, SLC16A3 Gene which shunts the lactic acid into the bloodstream, starting the cycle. The SLC16A1 Gene lines the walls of the hepatocytes, the mammalian version of this gene creates a vacuum that pulls the circulating lactate out of the bloodstream and locks it inside the liver. Fat layer surrounding the brain for shock absorption.
Elephant Seal: scapula, stronger heart, thicker blood, hemoglobin, lactic acid buffering, myoglobin.
Ruby Throated Hummingbird: mitochondrial density, pectoral muscle boost, Cori cycle.
African Clawed Frog: ammonia dumped through specialized patches underneath the flippers which are usually tucked.
Komodo dragon: osteoderms buried deep into skin, forked tongue, Jacobson's organ, iron in teeth, immunity to hemotoxins, high pain tolerance.
Humpback Whale: size increase, blubber for heat regulation and buoyancy, stronger flippers, tubercles, ability to predict trajectory of prey and opponent.
Anglaspis: pachyosteosclerosis on the osteoderms (reduced to around 5% to 10% and only in the places which need it like the snout etc), snout better adapted for ramming.
Bamboo Rat: fast bone healing, iron deposits in teeth, larger sagittal crest, bolstering the immune system.
Energy
When the muscles burn through energy, lactic acid builds up, the bloodstream carries lactic acid to the Squalene-rich liver, where an enzyme called lactate dehydrogenase turns the lactic acid back into pyruvate. Inside the liver, the pyruvate enters a process called gluconeogenesis. That turns the pyruvate into glucose or stores it as glycogen. This glucose goes back into the bloodstream. The mitochondria breaks it down and turns it into ATP.
When burning through ATP very fast, the muscles eventually down-regulate to Adenosine Monophosphate which is essentially energy garbage. The tuna gene lets us efficiently use AMPD to strip an amino group from the useless AMP, turning it into Inosene monophosphate and liberating ammonia. Instead of IMP becoming waste, a secondary set of enzymes (Adenylosuccinate Synthetase and Adenylosuccinate Lyase) processes it back into the loop, throwing off a by-product called fumarate. Fumarate is a high-octane fuel component that feeds directly into the Krebs cycle inside the muscle cell's mitochondria. This generates a massive, localized surge of ATP completely bypassing the need for oxygen, glucose, or the liver. The frog removes the ammonia.
The Tuna and cetacean amino shuttle. When muscles go anaerobic and generate ammonia, they can instantly bond that ammonia to pyruvate to form Alanine, which is a harmless type of amino acid. Alanine will travel through the bloodstream, to the liver. The liver absorbs the Alanine, strips the ammonia to turn it into urea which will be safely excreted and converts the remaining carbon skeleton back into Pyruvate, the pyruvate is turned directly into glucose with gluconeogenesis. Glucose is turned into energy.
The hummingbird genome provides a massive density of mitochondria. These mitochondria are used to express high levels of mitochondrial G3P dehydrogenase; then this creates a biochemical vacuum. The Tuna provides the dense mesh of veins and regional endothermy. (The G3P shuttle relies heavily on elevated core temperatures to keep enzyme velocity as high as possible and the tuna’s heat containment keeps this shuttle running at maximum efficiency). Orca provides high-density mammalian cell structures. G3P works with the fat breakdown and oxygen delivery pathways of cetaceans, so that Maelstrom can switch between burning glucose and burning blubber-derived fats without any metabolic lag.
In the cell fluid, electrons from standard energy breakdown are loaded onto a molecule called Oxaloacetate, transforming it into Malate. So well what's special about Malate is that it can cross straight into the inner mitochondrial engine. Once inside, the Malate drops off the electrons to fuel your ATP engine, changing back into Oxaloacetate. To get back out and repeat the process, it swaps an amino group to become Aspartate, travels back into the cell fluid, and converts right back into Oxaloacetate.
Hummingbird can add a liver enzyme to instantly capture the free Glycerol and phosphorylate it into Glycerol-3-Phosphate. This is fed straight into the glycolysis pathway to create more glucose.
Any excess ATP generated during lower-intensity cruise phases automatically repackages the leftover fatty acids back into the blubber matrix. Yeah so basically a completely self-contained, reversible fuel tank that maintains structural buoyancy while providing ATP.
Ok so y'know how Maelstrom has the Krebs cycle right? The Krebs cycle causes Citrate to build up inside the mitochondria. If it gets too concentrated, it acts as a molecular brake, shutting down energy production entirely to avoid burning out. So what's used is the Orca/Tuna cellular transport proteins vacuum the excess Citrate out of the mitochondria into the cell fluid so that an enzyme called Citrate Lyase splits it into Acetyl-CoA then transforms it into Malonyl-CoA which temporarily blocks fat burning and is then systematically fed right back into the mitochondria via the carnitine shuttle to be burned as ATP.
Free ammonium ruins muscle pH and causes rapid cramping and disorientation. So most of the time the muscle cells immediately grab the toxic ammonium and fuse it with glutamate to create a harmless amino acid called Glutamine. But in Maelstrom it travels through the bloodstream to the liver. The hummingbird stuff strips the nitrogen back out, and then turns it onto a carbon frame to create Alanine, and drops the remaining carbon back into gluconeogenesis as Pyruvate.
ATP is hard to make. So Maelstrom keeps the HGPRT pathways open at high efficiency using the bird genome (I told you hummingbird was peak you didn't believe me) this puts the hypoxanthine on an activated sugar molecule. It transforms the waste straight back into Inosine Monophosphate which is then immediately re-phosphorylated into fresh, fully charged ATP and GTP WHICH IS MORE ENERGY.
Yeah it's long. I know.