Fungi and Ferrotrophy

Future Game Microbe Stage
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While researching for Multicellular and Macroscopic and Trophic Lineages, it came to my attention that fungi, which I thought might be under represented by AutoEvo and Miches, are actually not represented at all in the current version of Thrive. Additionally, Siderophores remain an experimental feature of questionable scientific accuracy. I realize we are late into development and hoping to move forward to Multicellular soon, but I had a two part idea that I believe could help with both of these problems.

A Ferric Lysosome enzyme option and a separate Extracellular Digestion part.

The Ferric Lysosome enzyme option would look something like this: A Prokaryote with Rusticyanin would be able to digest iron clouds but not be very good at digesting chunks. A Eukaryote with Lysosomes that chooses the Ferric digestive enzyme option would be able to break Iron chunks into cloud well enough but without either Rusticyanin or Ferroplasts, Chunks would go in and clouds would pass out (which might actually be a good way to attract prokaryote iron eaters to prey upon). A Eukaryote with both Lysomsomes with the Ferric digestive enzyme option and Ferroplast or Rusticyanin would be good at digesting iron chunks.

As for the Extracellular Digestion part: Fungi, and experimental Siderophores, digest things not by engulfing them, but by excreting digestive enzymes to digest them outside of their bodies and then slurping up the externally digested nutrients. I have no idea what to call this part, but, a Heterotroph with this part would effectively be a fungi, while a Lithotroph with both this part and and either Rusticyanin or Ferroplasts would effectively function as experimental Siderophore does now, except their spit would also damage single and double membrane cells like the default toxin, and the damage to cells, as well as the rate that external chunks could be dissolved, could be increased by adding Lysosomes.

Bearing in mind that, as I understand it, the AI does not currently know what Lysosomes are but can still be heterotrophic, I suspect balancing a Ferric digestive enzyme option would not be more difficult balancing the already existing options. Adding the AI for and balancing the use of the Extracellular Digesting part might be challenging, but, at least at a Macroscopic level, Fungi are a very important part of balancing an ecosystem, and they currently do not exist at all in Thrive. Eventually, in some form, they should be a part of Thrive, and the Extracellular Digestion part would allow them to (with proper Miches and AI) naturally evolve, like plants, instead of just being artificially represented. The Extracellular Digestion part could also perhaps be how spiders inject prey with digestive enzymes.

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I don’t think venomous-digestive fangs are the same thing as fungi digestion…

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External digestion would be a great addition! Imagine the possibilities, like a world of cellulosic saprotrophs and chitin photosynthetic organisms! (This would be possible in the game, right?)

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It’s already sort of possible for the plant part, but sessile heterotrophs aren’t really a thing yet. Well unless you have pulling cilia…

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Well, not in a viable way at least. Make a Eukaryote with mitochondria and a chitin cell wall for a unicellular variant, make it branching and stretched out in multicellular for a real fungus. Be completely sessile and just rely on whatever compounds happen to float into you.

The only problem is, this is obviously not enough to survive on.

It’s interesting that you would suggest this, because this is what makes the siderophore concept “inaccurate”. The type of iron that can be oxidised to provide energy will just dissolve into the water, it’s already accessible to anyone that can use it.

Note that on the cellular level this is actually also the case for animals. Extracellular digestion is an ancestral trait of the Ophistokonts, which includes fungi and animals. Some members also eat via phagocytosis, but obviously fungi adding a full chitin cell wall blocks this both IRL and in Thrive. Though even with animals, phagocytosis mainly happens with immune cells, not with the actual digestive system. That works similarly to fungi: excrete enzymes out of the cell and slurp the result back up.

As far as I can tell the only reason why (most) animals are not considered “osmotrophs”(absorbing compounds by osmosis), unlike fungi, is that on the macroscopic level they do bring food “inside” the body.

As for Thrive: the game right now has no need of extracellular digestion: Cells that die dump a lot of compounds directly into the water in a form anyone can absorb, and cell chunks very quickly dissolve into the same. Essentially, every cell self-digests upon death, or we’re all swimming in a soup of digestive enzymes.

If this were to become a thing, I would keep the two projectile types separate. An enzyme that breaks down rocks is very different from one that digests organic material. And as far as I know even the toxin types don’t get combined in thrive.

So, if I wanted to allow fungi, and extracellular digestion in general in thrive, this is what I would do:

  • Make sure a significant part of the nutrients of dead cells gets locked up in organelles/cell chunks.
  • Make cell chunks dissolve much more slowly, on the scale of iron chunks. (Maybe add new chunks that represent the nutrients locked in cell walls.)
  • New organelle or lysosome variant that creates an “enzymatic enzyme” agent. Press a button to excrete as a cloud into the environment, similar to slime jet, but maybe all around. The cloud rapidly digests cell chunks inside it, maybe hurts other cells somewhat.
  • (bonus: separate extracellular enzymes for cellulose/chitin walls, make sure you can get a lot of glucose out of those chunks. This would also damage cells with these types of cell walls.)
  • Rebalance membrane types. This would make engulfment relatively even more powerful, so all cell walls need something really strong to compensate for not being able to engulf. Perhaps osmoregulation needs to be even more expensive for single/double membrane, and cell walls need to reduce it so much you can afford to wait a long time for a meal to pass by.

Quite a bit of work.

Perhaps less than you would think. Humans, fungi, spiders, it’s all digestive enzymes excreted out of cells. The differences are:

  • spiders on the macroscopic level have the apparatus to inject.
  • Concentrations and strength of enzymes.
  • Perhaps more protein and fat-digesting enzymes for the spider, with the fungi needing to handle more cellulose.
  • Bug insides are easier to digest than plants.

Of course, there is also the paralytic venom that the spider may inject, but that is a separate issue.

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It should be also noted we’d want some diversity in the “sessile heterotroph” class and not them to just be a 1:1 copy of real life fungi.

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It already does that. Move an iron chunk and watch the cloud that slowly leaks out of out of it. The idea is that the lysosome enzyme would speed up the process and Rusticyanin and Ferroplasts would just be for absorbing the clouds.

I am not entirely sure how this works IRL, but my idea was, with the Extracellular Digestion part, whatever enzymes you have, based on your cells lysosomes or lack thereof, pressing the button to use Extracellular Digestion would release a collection of all your enzymes at once. So if your cell has the lysosome to digest cellulose and the lysosome to breakdown iron chunks faster, using your Extracellular Digestion would release the cellulose, iron, and normal digestive enzymes all at once in the same balance and power your stomach has (so more lysosomes for engulfing digestion means more powerful Extracellular Digestion). Again, I am not that familiar with how that works IRL, that was just the idea I was going for.

Having it stay close instead of “shooting” the way toxins and Siderophores do makes sense.

Again, my idea was to still use normal lysosomes for that, and the new part would be just to get your existing internal lysosomes enzymes outside of your body.

How would sending your digestive enzymes out side of your body make bringing thing inside more powerful?

Hmm. :thinking:

Yeah, at a single celled level, that sort of makes sense, but I hope macroscopically that gets altered to be possible.

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If you ejected your lysosomes, would they regenerate/be rebuilt then in the first order ahead of other organelles?

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Oh yes, I was just looking at what would make it possible for something like fungi to arise.

What you would really want to is make sure the parts and mechanics are available, and then create a (set of) miches that can by something similar or less similar to fungi.

It seems you misunderstand me, I am aware of what you’re saying and from a pure gameplay perspective, your suggestion would work.

But earlier you were talking about the un-realism of siderophores, and it’s the same here: as far as I am aware, this does not exist in nature. Why? Because chemically/physically there is just no need for it. It’s easy enough for this type of iron to dissolve into water in sufficient amounts, that for over 3 billion years, nobody ever bothered trying to speed it up.

As far as I understand, you can usually see it as cell parts producing membrane-wrapped “bubbles” inside the cell that contain the enzyme. When needed, those bubbles go and fuse with the outside membrane, dumping their contents outside.

Since agents in Thrive do cost something to produce, I feel like that would often end up wasting a lot of energy?

IRL organisms are usually set up so that they only produce/excrete the enzymes that are needed. For example, I’ve read Fungi are quite good at this.

It’s not really a major problem though I suppose. And treating them all as the same is certainly simpler.

This could work. An alternative would be to have it as an upgrade of the lysosome part. That seems to be how Thrive usually handles “different usage of the same type of part”.

I’m mainly talking about the changes you quoted below, because locking more energy into organelles and making them dissolve slower means non engulfing-cells now need add parts to digest them. Meanwhile, engulfing cells don’t need any additional parts, they can already engulf and digest those things.

That’s why they would get relatively more powerful.

I should mention I went to check and the different toxin parts do all use one “compound”, they only become different when they get launched one by one out of the cell.

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By the way, how would “mind control” fungi work?

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I meant the enzymes they contained. I have edited it.

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Oh I see. I wonder if you could modify a toxin vacuole to shoot out digestive stuff instead of, well, toxins.

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