Biocompatibility issues

            Single celled organisms occupy perhaps the greatest niche available in any ecology, their size, simplicity and robustness make them ideal for niches which multicellular organisms would have no chance of occupying, as such these organisms are the most diverse organisms in any ecosystem, though there may be many hundreds of thousands of visible multicellular species on the surface of a planet, each gram of soil could rival this number of species with just single cellular organisms. Not only are there huge numbers of species, none of these organisms are easily visible, and each is terribly robust. As such the threat possibility of these organisms to contaminate an environment is huge. By contrast larger multicellular organisms are easier to contain, and there are fewer species.

            The potential fear of catastrophic xeno-biological contamination was a real concern in the early days of the Federation, the Trenoc still held these fears when they went to Corten, and had to be persuaded by the Pholi that they posed no threat to them in this biological sense. Since these early days, numerous experiments have somewhat alleviated these fears, but the original fears of threat still caution every advance of Federation space.

            The original fear was that a xeno-biological organism could contaminate another ecology, the results could cause havoc in many different ways. There were fears that microorganisms could infect other organisms colonizing and perhaps killing them, other fears included super-proliferation of xenobiological organisms. Before interstellar flight there was still a risk of these types of invasion, thousands of tones of material fall on the Federation Homeworlds each year, and even if a very small amount is interstellar in origin, this influx of material is continuous, and has been for billions of years. However because of these uneventful years where nothing had happened it was assumed that worlds were relatively safe, despite the increasing knowledge that microorganisms could survive re-entry and the transit between worlds. This evidence amongst other arguments would only really hold water when experiments could be conducted on truly alien life.

            When the interstellar of the Trenoc began they tentatively began testing their arguments of biological contamination, and had that their worst fears were at least exaggerated, because if they weren’t the Federation colony worlds would never have been settled, and very likely the intelligent species would have never met face to face.

            There are in fact a large number of reasons why xenobiological organisms have not lived up to be as fatal as thought. The first set of reasons revolve around the fact that by in large life is pretty much the same everywhere, most of the life within the federation shares the essential basics, that is water based and using carbon chemistry. Further still the chemistry of these organisms are also strikingly similar, nearly all using the same nucleotides, amino acids, sugars and lipids, though perhaps not in the same way. In short organisms everywhere used the same essential components. Because of these rules any contaminating organisms introduced into an ecology would have to compete with the other organisms for the same material. A new organism is very unlikely to be as efficient as the indigenous organisms, and quite likely to be inferior, as such boom populations are not sustainable and most likely the new organisms will be pushed into minority. The other problem for new organisms is that if its compounds are in someway dissimilar to the native compounds it may have to invest considerable energy generating essential components that are easy to come by on their own worlds. Also in most situation the new organisms, because of their similar chemistry are likely to be predated upon the same as any other, in an environment which they are not best adapted. This first reason does not remove the fears proposed, but at least in most cases blunt these fears, and in practice none of these concerns has materialized, the sheer complexity of the existing environment mean that any new organism is most likely to struggle to survive.

            The fear that new organisms could create new and horrifying diseases were generally fiction, most disease are so finely tuned to their hosts that few are unable to incubate in other species, yet alone cause harm, as such xenobiological pathogens are extremely unlikely to cause problems in new hosts. There does remain however the possibility that foreign organisms produce toxins that disagree with the original ecology, where as the risk of disease is reduced caution should be taken before assuming that organisms in the foreign ecosystem are harmless. Though most foreign organisms pose no direct risk to health as long as certain caution is exercised (e.g. not eating them) there are a few which inadvertently colonise new hosts. These diseases were not ‘intentional’ but an opportunistic use of new environment, in the worst cases these ‘new diseases’ are fatal, toxins leach into the host’s system and death ensues, though in most cases these infections are merely irritating. The positive side to these new diseases is that like traditional pathogens they are composed of the same materials so an immunity can be raised against these xeno-biological organisms. Biological surveys of new colony worlds usually find that the existing ecosystem, apart from some poisonous species, and irritating organisms poses little threat to the colonists, some worlds require a little more tolerance, perhaps requiring vaccination to at least provide the settlers with some immunological tolerance to the new environment. Worlds whose ecology is greatly incompatible with federation life are generally passed by for colonization. By some fortune the environments of the Federation Homeworlds are by in large compatible, and there has never any major issue concerning contact amongst the Federation races.

            The final revelation considering the compatibility of the life was that on many worlds there do exist xeno-biological organisms, the fact that they pass so unnoticed is generally from the fact that they still do not interact with ecosystems as nicely as the original inhabitants, perhaps the best examples amongst the single celled organisms is where a process of horizontal gene transfer has made them almost identical to the original life-forms, so rather than foreign organisms dominating new ecologies they are far more likely to adapt to fit in with them, the benefits of this adaptation mean that they are capable of efficiently competing with resources, as well as making use of their new ecologies. In short, and in most cases it is of benefit for the foreign invaders to remodel themselves on the aboriginal ecology, at least for long-term survival.

            However in this age of star-faring the exchange of new organisms is far greater than the natural dispersion of organisms through space, as such there does exist a need to monitor the spread of organisms, as well as to ensure that any new world is checked for suitability before it is colonized, because when it is, these organisms will undoubtedly spread.

            Though the Federation has avoided the worst fears, there have been minor incidents, generally where ‘new diseases’ have appeared which have evaded detection, or more generally when a multicellular organism has proved to be a nuisance. None of these minor incidents caused much in the way of ecological damage, or even many casualties, mostly due to prompt response, and thorough understanding of xenobiologial organisms before exposure can occur.