Epithelial-mesenchymal transition, adhesive proteins and extracellular matrix

[50gens]

@Swampuss

even humans go through metamorphosis, I mean, puberty

lol

@Swampuss

Rather, I proposed a relatively convenient way to set up tissues so that you don’t have to manually set all the tissues, well, that is, by setting up adhesive molecules, you could determine what is inside and what is outside.

Doesn’t this only create two types of cells, skin and internal?

@Swampuss

cells with fewer adhesive molecules (and therefore less adhesion) migrate out of cells with more of them

@Swampuss

Setting up this tissue so that the game itself determines how it is located (well, set cell types and extracellular matrix there)

How could the players design a colony by changing the amount of adhesive molecules around some cells? If any shape can be created that way, the players might as well place cells wherever they want, not dealing with how that happens. If some shapes can’t be created, the players can still design the final product but with less freedom.

@Swampuss

But here the muscular and skeletal system, probably, will have to be done manually, although here you can think of something

Every limb can have a muscle for it, a slider determining the amount muscle. Even tardigrades have^[1] muscles which attach to their skin.(cuticle)

@Swampuss

we don’t have the ability to reduce organelles in cell types

I just tried this, it is possible to remove organelles from different cell types in 0.6.0

@Swampuss

we can’t even turn off the genes of certain organelles, that is, delete them

Related: there was a suggestion for removing organelles but keeping the gene

Atavistic organelles · Thrive Suggestions

---

@Deus

You can spend points to unlock a tolerance, and then upgrade that tolerance into whatever level you desire.

@Deus

The first type of enzyme is pretty easy to understand – the more of them you have, the more tolerant you are.

I think there should be a two step process for adding organelles, proteins and enzymes. The first is evolving the gene for it (or doing a horisontal gene transfer). This takes most of the dna points. After unlocking it, it takes only a small amount dna points^[2] for moving it around the cell or changing the number/amount of it.

What prevents the player from putting 10 mitochondrias? The amount of resources required for growing that cell, and the probability that the cell might die before it can reproduce.

Maybe the dna cost for increasing the enzymes can be made a little bit higher, so that you can’t become an extremophile in one turn. I don’t know how fast they evolved in real life. But copying organelles should be easy, that already happens in mitosis.

@Swampuss

I hope you have a translator

yes I have**

@Swampuss

(ГЕНЕТИКА РАЗВИТИЯ | Баттулин | Вавиловский журнал генетики и селекции)

coordinates and migration

It is necessary to decide where the head will form in the future, and where the tail will form (anteroposterior axis), which side the back will be on, which side the stomach will be on (dorsoventral axis).

The axes of symmetry of the embryo create a coordinate grid that serves as a guide for the cells. It is convenient to consider how this happens on the example of a Drosophila embryo*

As mentioned above, determining its location is one of the most important tasks of the cell during development (…) Thus, primary heterogeneity is created in the egg, now any cell of the embryo can find out at what distance from the anterior and posterior poles it is by the concentration of these proteins.

the only way available for cells to estimate the distance is to measure the concentration of a specific substance (morphogen) released by the landmark. The farther the cell is from the source of the gradient, the fewer morphogen molecules reach it. Gradients of various morphogens throughout the developmental process serve as a source of information about the spatial position of cells in the developing embryo.^[3]

Using the example of the formation of the anteroposterior axis of the Drosophila embryo, it can be illustrated that the entire individual development of the organism can be divided into separate, very simple, cell behavior programs. A typical program looks like this: “if the concentration of substance A in the cell is X, then activate gene B.”^[4]

Figure 2 shows a hypothetical example of the implementation of such a program, […] based on gradients of three substances, the D gene is activated in three regions in the anterior lower quarter of the embryo. If the product of this gene triggered a limb development program, then our hypothetical embryo would develop into a six-legged ant-like animal.

where are all these thousands of programs of cell behavior recorded? Answer: of course, in DNA. All these instructions are regulatory elements of genes - enhancers, silencers, transcription factor landing sites in the promoter regions of the gene, etc.

It is possible* to give the cells only the information in the immediate vicinity of them, and simulate their behavior to get the emergent properties of the organism. Is that how it should be in Thrive?

hox genes

the main the task of the genes of early development is to establish the axes of symmetry and determine the boundaries of the segments of the embryo. What this or that segment will eventually turn into is determined by another group of genes - Hox genes. […] Many animals are characterized by body segmentation. […] The head of insects is formed from several segments, which carry elements of the mouthparts and antennae.

A homeotic mutation is a mutation in a gene that leads to the transformation of one part of the body into another. […] Due to the presence of 4 complexes of Hox genes in the vertebrate genome, homeotic mutations in them are very rare

the emergence of a new trait is not necessarily associated with the emergence of new genes (such cases are rare), more often existing developmental genes change the time or place of expression or acquire additional functions, which leads to the emergence of new traits.

In the multicellular editor, there may be “mini editors”, used for designing internal organs and outside parts like the mouth. The outside parts can be paced on the organism just like how it was in spore, but with a single difference. A point mutation^[5] in an hox gene can make your right arm grow from your chest, but would the nerves and blood vessels also be integrated to the rest of the body? They wouldn’t, and this mutation wouldn’t be selected.

So if we put a dna point cost to moving the parts (maybe exponentially more as it is moved farther away), they would only be moved and their sizes changed slightly in each generation^[6], forcing the creatures to do wing-assisted incline running before they can fly.

The acquisition of “snake” traits in the process of evolution, apparently, was associated with Hox genes.

@Swampuss

Yes, the snake embryo in its initial stages is similar to the embryos of other tetrapods, and some snakes have rudimentary hind limbs, BUT this does not mean that the snake embryo has legs. Here you can just fall into the trap of not one hundred percent reliability of these laws.

I think growth could still mimic evolutionary history except for some deletions, it could be as if they never happened.

---

1. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/tardigrade-anatomy#:~:text=Tardigrades%20have%20muscles%20that%20attach,tardigrade’s%20legs%20and%20body%20around. ↩︎

2. 5? ↩︎

3. In reality, the formation of two differently directed gradients at the poles is only the beginning of the deployment of the embryo’s coordinate system. Based on these gradients, new gradients are established that have a different spatial distribution. ↩︎

4. Programs can be more complex, taking into account the gradients of several substances at once, for example: “if the concentration of substance A in the cell is X, and substances B and C are absent, then activate gene D.” ↩︎

5. i guess ↩︎

6. a 10 million year gap between the editor sessions in aware stage? ↩︎