S1E7 - Cytosis (Cell Biology) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason (00:00):
Music. Hello and welcome to the gaming with science

(00:07):
podcast where we talk about thescience behind some of your
favorite games.

Brian (00:12):
Today, we're going to discuss Cytosis by Genius Games.
Hey, I'm Brian.

Jason (00:21):
This is Jason.

Brian (00:23):
Welcome back to Gaming with Science. Today, we're going
to talk about Cytosis, a cellbiology game. It was a game
designed by John Coveyou byGenius Games. I don't know why
it's taken us this long to do aGenius Games game, considering
they are specialists in hardscience games, and they seem to
share the exact same core valuesas gaming with Science. I know

(00:45):
this is our first. I'm sure itwon't be our last. But anyway,
before we get into that game,Jason, do you have anything for
us to banter about?

Jason (00:51):
Well, I like the science topics, and you actually pointed
me out to one that's related tothis, which is a preprint. So
you've got publications in finaljournals, but you also these
things called Preprints, whichis where you post your paper up
before it's been peer-reviewed,so you can get the results out.
You can kind of stake a claim toit. But according to their
preprint, they've developed away to do not quite reverse

(01:12):
translation, but somethingsimilar. So we're going to talk
about this more later today,where translation is where you
take the genetic informationfrom a cell and turn it into
protein, and it's generally aone way street. You can't go
back, but this group hasdeveloped a method to, not so
much go backwards, but at leastto take the proteins apart in
such a way that it's encoded inDNA that they can then sequence

(01:34):
and get back out. And this isreally cool, because we're
really good, like we as a field,science is very good at
sequencing DNA right now. DNAsequencing in some form, has
been around for 40, 50, years,but high throughput sequencing
has been around for at least 20years now. Ee're very, very good
at it now. In fact, we'reastonishingly good at how much

(01:56):
DNA we can sequence. We suck atsequencing proteins. It can be
done. It's like, don't get mewrong, there are methods to do
it, but compared to what we cando with DNA, it's slow, it's
expensive, it's hard, and Idon't know that this method
really solves all of thoseproblems, but it potentially
gets rid of some of them. And ifwe can find a way of turning

(02:18):
proteins, protein information,into DNA information, and just
hooking into the existing DNAsequencing infrastructure, that
could open up whole new ways oflooking at biology, looking at
things, because most of thetime, it's the protein that
matters. We look at the DNAbecause the DNA is easy, but
most of that, one way oranother, ends up in a protein,
either directly or by changingwhich proteins are around. And

(02:41):
so being able to look at theproteins more directly gives us
a lot more information aboutdiseases, about things that in
plant science we care about,like crop production or disease
resistance. It's like there's areally cool thing that could
open up there. And so even ifthis group doesn't work out, I
hope someone manages to, like,build off of this and make it
work.

Brian (03:00):
This is the first time I've seen a preprint, and be
like, someone's going to get aNobel Prize for this idea. Maybe
not this group, but somebody'sgoing to get this to work, and
somebody's going to have a NobelPrize for this. I mean, the
whole idea about DNA. Why are weso good at doing DNA? Because
DNA is set up to make copies ofitself, right? You can take a
very small amount of nucleicacid and using a process called

(03:21):
the polymerase chain reaction,generate massive amounts of DNA.
You can go from one molecule toa billion in a couple of hours.
So you could start from a lowamount of material and work up
to a huge amount of material.But proteins don't do that
right? It's one direction. Sothe only way to read the
proteins out is you just makemore and more and more sensitive
instruments. It's neat to seesomething that could change the

(03:42):
field so drastically in such ashort period of time.

Jason (03:45):
Yeah, so will this one pan out? Don't know, but it's
really cool in the meantime.

Brian (03:49):
Yeah, for sure. All right, so do you want to talk
about cytosis?

Jason (03:52):
Yeah, let's dig into this.

Brian (03:54):
You know, when I do these, I usually try to do a
little bit on the designer ofthe games. So again, the
designer of such. Well, what iscytosis? Cytosis? What does it
actually mean? Cytosis isn'tactually a word that you
typically see on its own. It'sthe Greek root that means cell.
So cytosis would just mean "ofthe cell," so exocytosis "out of
the cell." Anyway. You'll seecytosis a lot, of a lot of
places, but that's not typicallya word you'll find out on its

(04:16):
own. But this is a game aboutcells. I mean, that is the the
proxy of this. It's cytosis, acell biology game. So the
designer, John Conveyou, heseems like a really interesting
guy. In fact, in the show notes,I'm going to point to an
interview that he did that kindof gives a little bit of his
history in his past and like,what brought him to this place.
But the short version of it is,is that he has a master's degree

(04:36):
in engineering, that he was ascience teacher for a while,
teaching biology, teachingchemistry, teaching all these
core things. Had an engineeringposition and left it to found
Genius Games, is he a CEO andfounder, and is as near as I can
tell, the lead designer onpretty much every one of their
products. They may have codesigners, but his name is on

(04:56):
basically every one of them, anda lot of these were his ideas.
He also has these games thatare like partner games. So he
has chemistry games, Ionic andCovalent, that are a pair of
games that talk about ionicbonds and covalent bonds. He's
been working on a series ofgames that will go from
transcription, making a RNA tomaking a peptide to and again,
all the way building up, justlike cytosis. Anyway. So what is

(05:18):
Genius Games? Genius Games isthis company that again, like
I'm surprised that we haven'tdealt with them yet. They have a

great tagline (05:25):
"credible science, incredible games." They
do have a mission statement. Andif I was to boil it down, I'm
going to paraphrase a littlebit, basically, they just
believe in the power ofscientific literacy to solve
societal problems, and they alsobelieve in the democratization
of science literacy, and thatgames are a good way to do that.
So they make games that are hardscience themes, games where the

(05:48):
science and the science conceptsare in the center of the game.
You know, if we considerwingspan our A, I mean,
hopefully a good Genius Gamesshould be like an A+ in terms of
like, that's the whole point, islearning the science as you play
the game.

Jason (06:01):
You've complained in the past about games where the
science is there, but not, like,super integrated into the game.
And it sounds like the wholemodus operandi of this company
is that, no, the science isgoing to be at the center, and
we're going to have apartnership between the science
and the game. So it's not justpainted on top of it.

Brian (06:17):
Education games has kind of a dirty word in the gaming
industry. Education Games is away of, like, just putting
something on your games that'slike, well, is the game fun to
play? Well, no, but it'seducational. So that is also
counter to their designprinciples. Here, the game needs
to be fun and awesome to play.And also, by the way, you're
going to learn a lot of goodscience at the same time. That's
a lot more than we would usuallytalk about the creator and the

(06:39):
company, but it, this companyneeded a little bit of time to
talk about. And like I said,there are definitely other
Genius Games, games from thiscompany that we're going to talk
about in the future. In fact, wehave some planned already for
season two. But what is cytosisitself? The game is a worker
placement game. If you've everseen a model of a cell, which I
think we all have at some point,you lay this out, and you have

(07:02):
the player mat that looks like adiagram of a generic human cell.
We've all probably had to take atest where you had to label the
little parts of the cell. It'slike, oh, where's the nucleus?
Where's the endoplasmicreticulum? Well, it's that in
game form. So you've got thismat in front of you with all
the, not all, but a lot of thelittle organelles. And at each
of these there's going to be alittle place where you do worker

(07:23):
placement, where you're going todo different actions. You're
going to have four differenttypes of research cubes, black
for mRNA, red for protein,yellow for lipids, and green for
carbohydrates. I think maybethere's a little bit of a color
choice there. I mean, I imaginered for protein kind of makes
sense. We think about like meat.Fats are often yellow. I don't
know why carbohydrates aregreen, but they are.

Jason (07:44):
They come from plants?

Brian (07:45):
Oh yeah, that makes sense to me. Why do you think mRNA is
black?

Jason (07:49):
That I don't know. Maybe because the nucleus is usually
dark and that's where it'sgenerated?

Brian (07:53):
That seems as good a reason as any. You also have
these little tokens that areATP. They're kind of shaped like
a little ATP molecule. I don'tknow why those aren't a token or
something. Probably just todistinguish them from the other
cellular resources, whichfunctions as the sort of
currency in the game, just likeit is in the cell, which I'm
sorry I'm kind of jumpingaround. We're going to come back
and talk about the science stuffmore. So if this is unfamiliar,

(08:14):
don't worry. We're going to comeback and talk about it. In
addition to that, you have cardsat the top that are sort of like
public goal cards that you canclaim. You get bonus points
around the cell. You got yourpoint tracker. I would say that
ultimately worker placementgames kind of all have a
relatively common language interms of how this stuff works
there. If you're familiar withone worker placement game, you

(08:36):
kind of get the idea you can seehow this is going to work.

Jason (08:39):
And in case anyone isn't, the basic idea is you have a set
number of actions every turn,and you have something to
represent those. And so you, youput your little worker, which
could be a meeple of some sort,usually. In this case, they're
little beakers, and you just,you put it on a spot, and you
say, Okay, I'm going to do thisaction. And usually there's only
so many spots to do that action.So if I claim the ability to

(09:00):
make mRNA, then Brian cannotalso claim that one, or at least
he doesn't get as good a one asI did. So there's a strategy in
terms of you can't just pickwhat's best all the time,
because if someone else blocksyour path, then suddenly you're
out and you have to wait untilnext turn to do it. So that's
some of the tension of it.There's finite places to go, and
everyone's competing forwhatever they need.

Brian (09:21):
There's a best spot and a second best spot. And then if
you're playing with a lot ofpeople, it's like, well, I just
can't do that this turn, right?You'll also have a deck of event
cards that you play in betweenrounds that may do things like,
oh, there's going to be extraATP available this turn. Or some
of the cards are bad. If you'vebeen hoarding your resource
cubes now you've experiencedtoxicity, so you'll suffer from
that. And then the other type ofcard is a cell component card.

(09:44):
These are the things that you'regoing to be building in your
cell and that are going to beearning you points. Other than
that, the each individualplayer, like Jason said, has
different colors of littleflasks that, in this case, are
our little meeples, let us doour actions, and as well as some
little vesicles. Some littlecircle disks that you'll use to
build some of your cellcomponents. So that is what the

(10:05):
game looks like. So as you playthe game, you will take turns
placing your little flasks tochoose what you want to do.
It'll allow you to collect thedifferent resources, protein,
mRNA and you're trying to buildthese little cell components
that you'll then also have topay an energy costs to score
points, which they call healthpoints. Which I don't know, what
would be better than that?Homeostasis points or something?

(10:26):
I'll have my little nitpicksession at the end of the game.
I think I do like to have mylittle nit picks. I think
Jason's more forgiving than Iam. But, I mean, I don't have a
problem with this game at all.It's a great game, but there's a
few little things always thatare, yeah, maybe this could be a
little different. At the end ofeach round, you'll flip over an
event card that will change thecell in some way, add new

(10:46):
resources or toxicity, andthat's it. You just go until all
of the event cards are used up,and then you count up how many
points you have. Is that a fairsummary?

Jason (10:55):
There's a few little surprises in terms of points at
the end because of the bonuscards and everything. But mostly
it's pretty straightforward.You, you buy your little goal
cards that, that are your littlecell component cards, so you can
build them, and you can scorepoints off of them, and there's
a few interactions. I wouldn'tsay it's a linear game, but
there, it's very clear whatyou're trying to do. You're
trying to build things in such away to get more points than your

(11:15):
opponents.

Brian (11:15):
Do you worry that the reason it feels linear to us is
because these are familiarconcepts?

Jason (11:20):
No, I don't think so. I think, I mean, the game is
linear in that you're, you havethis chain of resources you have
to move down in order to make ithappen. And I don't mean that as
a complaint about it, wheresaying, Oh no, it's like you
want lots of things. No, it's,it's more just that the goals
are very clear. It's not likethere's some hidden way where
once you've played this five orsix time, you suddenly realize,

(11:42):
like, Oh, this is the secret wayto actually get lots of points
out. Which I have seen somegames do that, where the things
that seem obvious at first areactually not the best choices.
This is not one of them. Likethe goals cards are pretty
clear. There may be some nuancesof interaction that open up a
bit more complexity as you, asyou mature and you get good at
it, but mostly like you openthis up to a new player, you see

(12:02):
some basic rules. They'll knowwhat they're supposed to do in
order to try to win.

Brian (12:05):
Particularly if you've played work replacement games
before, right? Like, if you'rein the hobby, this is gonna,
you'll get this immediately. Andit's got good board design to
kind of lead you through it,like most modern games do,
right? You're not having tomemorize everything. It's right
there on the board.

Jason (12:20):
Yes

Brian (12:20):
Let's talk about the science here a little bit and
like, how is the gamerepresenting the science? So I
gotta say, we've had games thathave done this before, but at
Genius Games, they've done allmy work for me. There is a four
page pamphlet included withcytosis called "cytosis, the
science behind the game," thatbreaks down the science and how
the game represents the science,which usually is most of the
work that I have, that we haveto do when we're doing planning

(12:43):
out an episode of Gaming withScience.

Jason (12:45):
Well, then the big question is, do they cite their
sources?

Brian (12:48):
They do not cite their sources, but they do provide,
but they do provide a list ofall of the people that provided
their sources. They crowdsourcethe science of this game, but
they don't have a referencescited list. That's true. I think
at this point, the only onewhere we've said, where they
were explicit about the sources,was wingspan. Let me, let me
think about how the best way.So, okay, what is a cell? The

(13:12):
cell is the basic unit of life,and all life is made of cells.
In fact, most life isunicellular. Is just a single
cell. But any living thing thatyou can see from you to every
plant to your pets, is made upof cells, individual cells
working together andcoordinating to build this
larger body. So and all cellshave and have certain things in

(13:32):
common. They all have a membranethat is comprised of lipids, a
lipid bilayer, um, kind of likea soap bubble with two walls.
Again, lipids are one of theresources in the game. I'm kind
of going to be bouncing back andforth between the science and
how the game represents it,because it just, it's so
intrinsic. It just makes senseto do that.

Jason (13:50):
And lipid is the the fancy science word for a fat or
an oil or something.

Brian (13:54):
Fat, oil. Uh, let's see. So and then every cell is going
to store its genetic informationin DNA. Every cell is going to
have proteins that are actuallydoing most of the work,
providing most of the structure,and then every cell uses the
same way of translating DNA,using RNA as an intermediate,
into those proteins. That isevery cell, and every cell

(14:15):
basically uses the exact samecode. There are so few
exceptions to that rule that,like we make a very specific
point about them when somethingis different. So you're going to
notice I haven't talked aboutcarbohydrates, which is the
other thing that provides theenergy for the cell. So these
all make up the macromoleculeswe've got mRNA, protein, lipids,
carbohydrates.

Jason (14:35):
And again, science term: "macro molecule" just means big
molecule, because cells have bigmolecules, which are these very
complicated things that arejoined together, especially like
the proteins and the, and thenucleic acids, like DNA and RNA,
yeah, as opposed to simplemolecules, which are small
things. Water is one. Individualsugars are not macromolecules,
but if you start joining themtogether into long things like

(14:56):
starch, then they become macromolecules, because you start
joining these small unitstogether into much larger ones.

Brian (15:02):
Yeah, I think, like, you can find small individual
compounds, like in lots ofdifferent contexts, but then to
find macromolecules, those arepretty much you're going to find
those in cells or made by livingcells. Like you can find little
individual molecules inside ofmeteorites, but you're not going
to find macromolecules likegiant proteins, strains of DNA.

(15:23):
In cytosis, we're playing as ahuman cell. What kind of cell? I
don't know, some kind of generichuman cell, but you can take all
cells and you can split theminto two big camps. There are
eukaryotic cells, that's likeour cells, that is a cell with a
nucleus, that is a cell wherethe DNA is stored in a separate
little compartment within thecell. That's the defining

(15:43):
characteristic. So fungi,plants, humans and other
animals, we are all eukaryotes.We all have these big,
complicated cells with nuclei,and then in that they have other
little compartments calledorganelles scattered around the
cell that do different jobs.Usually those are also bound up
in their own sort of separatelittle membrane bound
compartment. And cytosis is kindof giving us a tour through the

(16:05):
cell and how the cell works,right? I think I am also going
to do that basic tour, and let'stalk about the different things
in the game. So again, I alreadymentioned DNA, where all the
genetic information is stored.In a eukaryotic cell that is
inside the nucleus. So if wewant to express one of those
genes from the DNA, we will turna small portion of that DNA and

(16:25):
copy it into a strand of mRNAmessenger RNA. It's a single
stranded RNA copy of the gene.How does the game represent
that? In our nucleus is wherewe're going to get our RNA.
That's one of the first steps,right? So one of your action,
you place your action markerthere, you can get some mRNA.

Jason (16:41):
Yeah, and this is the act of getting the information out
of it. Think of a DNA as like,it's the long term storage of
information in the cell, and itprotects it. Your cells don't
want to be accessing the DNAmore than they have to, because
every time you do, you open upthe chance of getting damage.
And if you damage your DNA,well, that damage gets copied,
it gets saved. And basically youincrease the chance that things

(17:04):
are going to break down theline. So they don't actually
want to access DNA much. So theywill access it just a little bit
to make an mRNA copy. This islike going to your big, fancy
encyclopedia and just runningoff a quick photocopy of a few
pages that you need access to.Then you put the encyclopedia
back. You can take the pagesout, you can mark them up, you
can draw them on. You can putthem through the shredder.
Doesn't matter, because theoriginal copy is still fine.

Brian (17:26):
It's funny how we keep having to update our analogies
for these things too, becausewhen was last time you made a
photocopy of something?

Jason (17:32):
Okay, point

Brian (17:35):
But the principle is, is good and the principle is still
there. DNA gets a lot of credit.We spend a lot of time talking
about DNA, but the funny thingabout DNA is DNA really does
almost nothing, right? DNA isjust the repository of
information. The work is done bytypically, by proteins, by
enzymes that are doing thechemical react, doing most of
the things in the cell are doneby proteins. So the information

(17:58):
stored in DNA, we got to turn itinto proteins. That RNA copy
carries the information for eachprotein. So we got to take that
and then we got to load it ontoanother incredibly cool RNA
molecule called a ribosome thatcan take that like an assembly
line and read off the message inthe RNA and convert that into a

(18:19):
sequence of amino acids, thelittle, tiny bits and pieces,
the 20 letter alphabet thatmakes up all the proteins in the
cell.

Jason (18:26):
And this is so incredible. So this is like the
core of life as we understandit, really, is this change going
from nucleic acid to protein,going from RNA to protein. It is
ancient. It is the thing that weuse to basically tie all life on
the planet together. As far aspeople can tell, it's thought
that it basically predates DNA.So there's this thing called the

(18:49):
RNA world hypothesis, becausepeople are trying to figure out,
How did life get started? Lifeis such a complicated,
Rube-Goldberg contraption thatit's like everything depends on
everything else. How on earthcould we have something simple
enough to get going when we'vejust got a chemical soup going
around? And the answer to thatis still not known, but one
hypothesis is that we once had aworld of much simpler, of short

(19:11):
RNAs and short peptides, smallproteins working together, and
the ribosome is one of the lastand most robust artifacts from
that time of turning RNA intoprotein. It's a ribozyme. It is
an RNA enzyme, like the RNA doesthe work, which is really cool,
because RNA usually doesn't dochemistry. It usually just
stores information.

Brian (19:30):
Yeah, it is. It is the RNA is doing all the work. The
proteins are there just to, youknow, kind of provide support.

Jason (19:36):
It's a great big ball of RNA that has a few proteins
stuck on the outside fordecoration, but it is an RNA
molecule. It is not a proteinmolecule. The protein is
basically just providingstability.

Brian (19:47):
So it's funny, we say DNA gets a lot of credit. Nobody
pays attention to proteins. No,really, nobody pays attention to
RNA. RNA is like the forgottenmolecule.

Jason (19:56):
Yes, I know my PhD work was in an RNA chemistry lab, and
so we thought that all the time.And there's some really cool
stuff that RNA can do that isprobably outside the scope of
this, this particular episode.But yes, RNA is the plants of
the molecular biology. It'slike, it just doesn't get all
that much credit. People payattention to the proteins and
the DNA, and RNA just kind ofoverlooked.

Brian (20:18):
So, so we all have RNA blindness, is what you're
saying?

Jason (20:21):
A lot, Yeah.

Brian (20:22):
Anyway, where were we? We got to turn our RNA into a
protein, and the ribosomes arehow we do that. So in Cytosis,
you have two different placeswhere you can do that. You've
got our free ribosomes. Theseare floating in the cytosol,
that liquidy, whatever that isfull of all the stuff inside the
cell, the inside bit, the goop.The free ribosome is where the
cell is going to be making mostof the proteins that the cell

(20:43):
itself will use. But you've gotanother place that you're making
proteins, and that is the roughendoplasmic reticulum. Oh, I
really should have looked up theorigin of these names. Do you
know the origin of endoplasmicreticulum?

Jason (20:57):
So let's pick it apart. "Endoplasmic", so inside the
plasm. So inside the cell."Reticulum", reticulated is all
sorts like folds and, yeah,complicated. So it's probably
the really complicated foldedthing inside the cell.

Brian (21:11):
Yeah. So it's basically just totally based on the
observation of what the shapeis.

Jason (21:16):
And it has rough persons and smooth, rough has all these
little dots on it. Smooth doesnot.

Brian (21:21):
And the rough one actually is rough, now we know,
because it is studded withribosomes. It is coated with the
ribosomes. So the mRNA that isgoing to go into the endoplasmic
reticulum will do so byaccessing those ribosomes, and
it gets stuck. The protein isstuck into the endoplasmic
reticulum itself. So this iswhere all of the proteins that
are going to get shipped outsideof the cell will have to go or

(21:44):
the proteins that are going tostay in the plasma membrane have
to go into the endoplasmicreticulum first. Let's keep
moving down this proteinassembly line. So the next thing
we're going to have is the Golgiapparatus. Do you know what the
origin of that is? Because Ialso didn't look that up.

Jason (21:58):
I assume it's Mr. Golgi. That's all I've got.

Brian (22:00):
Probably Doctor Golgi

Jason (22:02):
Yes, probably Doctor Golgi.

Brian (22:05):
So our little proteins that are now in the endoplasmic
reticulum will kind of getblebbed off in these little
vesicles and then sent off tothe Golgi apparatus, which is,
again, just this kind of like,like hamburger stack of little
membrane things. And this is aprocessing and shipping center.
It's going to say, Oh, thisprotein needs to go here. This
protein needs to go here. It'salso a place where proteins can

(22:26):
be modified. So a protein ismade up of 20 amino acids, but
sometimes you have to put someother bits on it, right. For
instance, if it's going to beoutside the cell and survive,
sometimes you want to put somelike sugar armor on it,
basically to protect it.Carbohydrates, glycan, sugar.
These are all similar terms. Alot of proteins that are going
to stay outside the cell, you'llwant to kind of decorate them.

(22:46):
So you'll want to stick acarbohydrate on that. So in
Cytosis, this is where, hey, yougot to stick a, you got to add
your carbohydrate to your littlething, showing that you're
assembling this glycoprotein.

Jason (22:57):
Oh, and probably the place that our listeners are
most familiar with this is goingto be the blood type. So the ABO
blood types, or the positive,negative Rh factor, pretty sure
those are protein modificationsthat are hooked onto the outside
of the red blood cells.

Brian (23:11):
And then at that point, once that protein is all done,
it's been through the ER, it'sbeen through the Golgi. Now
we're going to ship it out ofthe cell, so it'll go through a
process called, here we go,exocytosis. So there's our
cytosis there. In the game, thisis when you would collect your
points, you actually have to payyour energy costs. In Cytosis,
you play that energy cost whenyou're done, obviously, in a
real cell, you're paying energyall the time. You can have a

(23:33):
couple different things. You cancreate hormones that are used
for cell-cell communication.This is why it's obviously a
human cell, because they have totalk to each other, and hormones
are how they do that.

Jason (23:42):
This'd be something like insulin.

Brian (23:44):
Exactly. You can make receptors, which are the things
that basically bind to and say,Hey, there's a hormone here. And
will do signaling. Those aretypically going to stay in the
cell wall, and that's everythingthat is going to go out through
the endoplasmic reticulum. Istwo different types of receptor
and the protein hormones.

Jason (24:00):
There's the steroid hormones, the fat based ones
that get exported, right?

Brian (24:04):
Yes, there are so, and that's where we go back to, so
we got the rough ER, so we alsohave smooth ER, what the heck is
that? Smooth ER is where thecell makes its lipids and it
will also make steroid hormones,which the fact that this cell is
making so many hormones, Ithink, gives us some clue about
what kind of cell this is. I'mpretty sure it's an endocrine
cell for making all thesedifferent types of hormones.
Your endocrine system producesall the hormones that your body

(24:25):
uses to regulate all these cellfunctions. As you can imagine as
a giant metropolis of cells,getting all those cells to talk
to each other and coordinate isnot necessarily easy. Hormones
are one of the ways that yourbody does that. So the smooth ER
is going to be make lipids, orlipid hormones. This is where
you get your lipid resources.Testosterone is a steroid
hormone, I believe.

Jason (24:45):
Yeah. The sex hormones are steroid hormones.

Brian (24:47):
Yeah. And those are going to start in this, in the smooth
ER, go to the Golgi, and thenget shipped out as well. Other
than that, we have a coupleother things that we haven't
talked about. We have themitochondria, which is very
cool, the mitochondria, used tobe a bacteria, that is the best
way to put it.

Jason (25:03):
Probably best....Let's start with where it's at. So the
mitochondria is called thepowerhouse of the cell. It's
what takes the food you take in,especially the sugars and such,
and turns it into energy. ThatATP molecule that is the energy
currency of the game and theenergy currency of the cell.

Brian (25:17):
How do we know that it used to be a bacteria? It has
its own DNA. It has its own tinygenome. It has its own
ribosomes, and those ribosomesare the same shape and size as
bacterial ribosomes. The genomeitself is circular, like a
bacterial genome. The"endosymbiosis hypothesis" is
that this was a bacteria thatwas captured by some ancient
precursor of eukaryotic cellsand sort of domesticated into an

(25:40):
organelle. They even have theirown replication period. An
individual cell can havehundreds of mitochondria in it.
I think, for instance, musclecells that need a lot of energy
can have hundreds and hundredsof mitochondria inside of them.
And the last little bit where wehaven't really dealt with yet is
the glucose transporter. So nowwe're at the plasma membrane.

(26:00):
It's right. The plasma membranedefines the inside and the
inside and the outside of thecell, which is great. You need
that right? You need to keepwhat's in in. You need to keep
what's out out, but you do needto move things back and forth.
So in a process that typicallycosts energy, you have a whole
series of specializedtransporters on the outside of
the cell that will take thingsin, like, for instance, glucose
or other types of carbohydrates.Again, this is very simplified

(26:24):
in cytosis, as it would be inany cell diagram. But here you
pay a little bit of energy, andyou get to bring in glucose. Now
that actually couples verynicely with the mitochondria,
because if you take one of yourcarbohydrate green cubes, you
can burn it at the mitochondria,and you get, like, a massive
influx of ATP. In the game it'ssix. In real life, it would be
like 32 for one glucosemolecule.

Jason (26:46):
But it does nicely play up the fact that burning glucose
in the mitochondria aerobicallyso with oxygen present gets you
a huge amount of ATP. It's alsopossible to do it anaerobically
without oxygen, and that getsyou much less, which is maybe
what those other spots arerepresenting,

Brian (27:05):
I would assume. I mean, I'm not sure. Again, I think to
a certain degree, some of thisis just like game balance
issues, right?

Jason (27:11):
As you said, genius games wants the science to be central
while making fun games. And howthey made it so the way you do
all of these components mirrorsthe way biology actually does
it. You have to start by makingyour RNA. When you're making
your little things to export outof the cell, you actually have
little circular vesicles, whichare a limited resource, that you
put the cubes on, and they movedown the chain as you are first

(27:35):
filling them with protein andthen filling them with lipids
and, and carbohydrates and thenpumping them out of the cell at
the end. And so will younecessarily learn cell biology
off of this? Maybe not, ifyou're just playing it just as a
game, but if you did this andthen you took a course on Cell
Biology, would it suddenly makea lot more sense and be easy to
learn? Heck, yeah,

Brian (27:54):
Yeah. I think that's and that's kind of what I think is
the point here, is like the cellis a little factory, right? And
you are making, doing the littlefactory, and you're right, if
you played Cytosis, and then youcome to the class, it's like,
Oh, I already know all of this,right? I learned all of this
from that great game. What wasthat called? Yeah, I think that
that covers most of the points.There's this very minor thing

(28:14):
where, if you've made areceptor, and somebody else
makes the matching hormone, youget, like, bonus points for
that, and you get more points ifsomeone else does it, which,
again, is this idea thathormones are for, mostly for
communication between cells. Butyeah, cytosis basically is this
wonderful tour through the cell,and they really do a good job of
representing, in a very simpleway, the basic processes of of a

(28:37):
eukaryotic cell doing itseukaryotic cell things.

Jason (28:40):
Yeah. And that said, we never actually defined the other
type of cell, which is theprokaryotic cell. Which is
everything else. And frankly,they outnumber us by probably,
like, a billion to one orsomething. These are the
bacteria, and technically, alsothe archaea, but they basically,
they look the same under themicroscope. These are your tiny,
little, single cell things,they're much, much tinier than

(29:02):
eukaryotic cells by and large,and they're much simpler. They
don't have a nucleus. Their DNAis mostly just free floating as
large circles. They do haveribosomes, but they don't
generally have any otherorganelles. It's only been about
30 years that we have what'scalled the three domain model of
life, which is the you have, thebacteria, the archaea, and then

(29:22):
the eukaryotes. And that wasdeveloped in the 1990s when
people started looking at theseribosomal RNAs and putting
together and realizing, like,oh, wait, the Archaea aren't
some like, weird little branchof bacteria. They're their
entire other domain that havebeen evolving separately for
three or 4 billion years frombacteria

Brian (29:40):
Like you and an elephant and a mushroom have way more in
common with each other than abacteria has with an archaea.

Jason (29:47):
Oh yeah. I mean, these things are separated by billions
of years of evolution.

Brian (29:51):
I want to pop in a little hot take on bacteria and
organelles, if I could. Soagain, the defining trait for
prokaryotes or bacteria is thatthey don't have organelles.
Right? They've got all of theirstuff just free in their
cytoplasm. Except one of themajor classes of bacteria have
two sets of membranes. They'vegot an inner membrane and an
outer membrane, and they have adefined space in between those

(30:12):
two membranes with differentfunctions, different enzymes,
different targeting. Sounds anawful lot like an organelle to
me.

Jason (30:21):
I mean, when you're wrapping the entire cell in a
second one, it's not really anorganelle. It's a it's an
interstitial space.

Brian (30:29):
Just going to point out that we all learned that our
skin is our largest organ, andI'm going to say that the
periplasm is the organelle ofbacteria. But again...

Jason (30:37):
Okay, touche, touche. This is just a thing. Brian was
trained on this type ofbacteria. I was trained on the
other type of bacteria, and so Ilike them better, and he likes
this type better. And we're notgoing to get into all the
differences there.

Brian (30:53):
We haven't found a good game to talk about bacteria yet,
so we're going to have to lookfor that. So let's get into the
nitpick corner.

Jason (30:59):
You're more nitpicky than I am, so you start

Brian (31:02):
Okay. So first of all, I don't mean this as a criticism.
I mean this is just a sort of afun exercise. So one of the
things about cytosis is thatit's a worker placement game.
You're in a cell. What are youas the player, exactly?
Competing inside of this humancell to get health points? Like,
you got five people competing inone cell to use the factory of
the cell to do what? Like, it'shard when you're not sure what

(31:25):
you're personifying. Do you knowwhat I mean?

Jason (31:28):
So I'm going to posit that since in Evolution, we were
apparently playing naturespirits and nature gods. I'm
going to posit that we areplaying cell spirits and cell
gods. They're very, very tinyones.

Brian (31:39):
So I have a, I have a different interpretation. I
think that we're playingtranscription factors, the
programs in the cell that willcontrol expression of different
types of cell parts, right? Thethings that turn different
sections of DNA on and off. Ifeel like maybe that makes
sense. What you have is multiplecompeting transcription factors,

(32:01):
sort of competing for control ofa single cell.

Jason (32:04):
You know, I could see that with everyone have their
own agenda, like this one'strying to turn on the protein
export synthesis. This one'strying to turn on the enzymology
here, and you're all goingaround, there's not a finite
pool of resources we're allcompeting for. So technically,
all the resource cubes areinfinite. If you run out, you
just find something else to fillthem in. So I guess that's the

(32:24):
one thing where that doesn'tquite hold up. But no, I can see
that.

Brian (32:29):
But I guess you're competing for access to the cell
machinery, right?

Jason (32:32):
True, true.

Brian (32:33):
Okay, so the other thing is a little bit of the mixed
metaphor of we're using flasksinside the cell, and that's just
weird. We're like, using theselittle chemistry flasks. So it's
like, are we humans controllingan individual cell? It's like,
because the cell doesn't havelittle flasks. This is totally
pointless, but I want to put,I'm going to point people
towards this in the show notes,there are these wonderful little

(32:53):
motor proteins. They look likethey walk on the cytoskeleton,
are these like filaments ofprotein that move and connect
all the different parts of thecell. They look like tiny little
sorcerer's apprentice broomsthat carry vesicles from place
to place. So I wish, instead ofhaving little flasks, we had
little kinesin meeples. They'rereally cute. Please look at it

(33:15):
if you're if you're listening tothis, please go to the show
notes and check it out. They aregoofy. And they haul around
like, you know, like, oh, antscan carry 10 times their weight.
These things are carrying thingsthat seem like they're 100 times
their size, just dragging themaround the cell.

Jason (33:29):
And they have a cute little walk too. So if you
actually look at videos of themwalking, it's like they're just
kind of like moseying around,like some little, like, 1950s
cartoon character just kind ofloping down its pathway. They're
actually they are very cute.

Brian (33:42):
They literally walk like I'm not, that's not a joke. That
is, they actually walk. It'scrazy. And would that be perfect
for Cytosis? No, because it'snot for every part, but better
than flasks, maybe.

Jason (33:54):
I guess you could put like little cell meeple, but a
flask is easy,

Brian (33:57):
But, but a kinesin is cuter.

Jason (34:02):
Then how would you have third party groups selling
upgrades to the game?

Brian (34:06):
All right, if there are legitimately third party groups
selling little kineeples, I wanta kineeple.

Jason (34:12):
Well, if there aren't, you could probably start 3d
printing them and put them onEtsy, because they, I mean, if
I've looked at some of the gameswe've played, there are so many
awesome upgrades that it's like,unfortunately, they usually cost
almost as much as the gameitself in order to do the
upgrade, but they look verycool.

Brian (34:27):
We're in a weird hobby. Do you ever think about that?
Yeah, do you have any littlenitpicks about the game? Yeah,
any little Do you have anylittle nitpicks?

Jason (34:36):
I guess? I mean, you know me, I like player interaction,
and I kind of wish there were away to interact with other
players that was not so much, Ijust steal your spot half by
accident. But if there'ssomething I could do that would
just make your life just alittle bit more difficult or
cost a few resources to get ridof, and maybe that's what the
viral expansion is. There's,there's an expansion this game

(34:58):
that introduces viruses. Youhave what? You have the flu,
you've got Ebola, yeah, a coldand Ebola. And one of these
viruses is not like the others.Yes, it's like, people do die
from the flu every year. Yes,the cold can kill people, but
then you have Ebola, yeah? It'slike, okay, we have escalated

(35:19):
the scale of the virus. Anyway,that's a side tangent, but maybe
that's a bit more that happensthere, because skimming over
those rules, there may be moreways of mucking with other
players based on what virusesshow up and what you do with
them.

Brian (35:33):
So we should. We're running a little short on time.
We haven't talked about when weplayed the game yet, so we had a
special thing happen this timefor me in particular, I haven't
beaten Jason in a game since...

Jason (35:44):
Not for this podcast, You've beaten me in some games
we've played just in our familygame day.

Brian (35:48):
Sure, occasionally, but in this game, we tied on points.
We used completely differentstrategies. We tied on points,
and then we checked the book tosee, Okay, what about the tie
breaker? Oh, the tie breaker is,well, how many cell component
cards have you made? We tiedagain on that, so we double tied
on this game.

Jason (36:05):
Yeah, I think at that point we invoke the Evolution
rules of ordering pizza andplaying again.

Brian (36:10):
I think there was something else where it just
said, you just choose a randomwinner. Basically, it's like,
no, we're not going to do that.So let's do our report card.
Let's start with the Sciencereport card. So we've talked
about how we have our skills seta little differently for the
science, for me, it is, how muchscience are you going to learn,
whether purposeful or nonpurposeful, by playing this
game? With sort of B is ourstarting point. With wingspan as

(36:33):
our A, Cytosis, for me is an Aplus. I don't know how you could
do better. I really don't. Wehave, obviously have curved
grades, but like, this is, thisis more that this is an A plus.
For me

Jason (36:46):
I'd also put it solidly in the A, A plus range. I mean,
this is right up setting thestandard for how you have a game
that is fun, which we'll get toin a bit, but also a game that
is, that teaches you thingsabout science while you're doing
it. It's not just a skin paintedon top of it. It is actually an
integral part of the game. Andyou learn things even if you
don't know you're learning themby playing it. So, yeah, I think

(37:08):
this is totally A territory.

Brian (37:10):
Why don't you list out on how much did you enjoy the game?

Jason (37:14):
I'm gonna put gameplay also up in A territory. This is,
I think, a very well balancedwork replacement game. I think
they're multiple strategies youcan pursue. You can adjust your
strategies based on the otherpeople. There's enough spaces to
have options, but they're scarceenough that you that you always
want to try to grab the bestones first. I felt like it was

(37:34):
making me think and making meplan and try to react to what
you were doing a lot, and that'smy metric for a good work
replacement game. So I put thisalso in A territory.

Brian (37:44):
And for me, my fun is, how likely am I to grab it off
the shelf, you know, throw it inthe car, bring it to game night,
or just whatever? And cytosis isone of these games. We don't
play it all the time, but I havepulled it off the shelf and
wanted to play it routinely,which is, I've got plenty of
games that that's not the casefor. I was excited to play
cytosis again. We still haven'tplayed the virus wxpansion.
We'll actually have to do thatat some point.

Jason (38:05):
Yeah, that may or may not be enough to make another
episode off of, but, yeah, we'lldo that at some point.

Brian (38:09):
This is an A this is, I think this might be our highest
scoring game. Is that true?

Jason (38:13):
I don't remember what we gave wingspan on the, I mean, I
think it also got A's on both. Imean, it's it, it's A for
science and...

Brian (38:21):
yeah, wingspan and cytosis, I think, have been our
highest scoring at this point.

Jason (38:24):
Huzzah, we now have two games we can compare everything
to, instead of always having totalk about wingspan! If anyone
out there really hates wingspan,I'm sorry that you have to hear
about us talk about it so much,

Brian (38:37):
Although I gotta be honest, I have yet to to meet
someone who doesn't likewingspan. Much like Catan was
that starter game for a lot ofpeople, you would be amazed how
many people have playedwingspan, just people who don't
play games play wingspan.

Jason (38:51):
Now we need to get cytosis into more people's
hands. So that is probably timeto wrap it up. Thank you all for
listening. Hope you had fun.Have a good week and happy
gaming.

Brian (39:01):
Have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya.
This has been the gaming withScience Podcast copyright 2024
listeners are free to reuse thisrecording for any non commercial
purpose, as long as credit isgiven to gaming with science.
This podcast is produced withsupport from the University of
Georgia. All opinions are thoseof the hosts, and do not imply
endorsement by the sponsors. Ifyou wish to purchase any of the

(39:21):
games that we talked about, weencourage you to do so through
your friendly local game store.Thank you and have fun playing
dice with the universe.
Today, we're going to discusscytosis both the heck was that.

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S1E7 - Cytosis (Cell Biology)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S1E7 - Cytosis (Cell Biology)