Be sure to back it up with at least a modicum of science. But this is a creative excersise so meh. Gameplay is important.
Edit:
For example I want to add lysosomes but it would just be a way for good players to challenge themselves eg. You place them now you have to do mitosis in X amount of time or have apostasis. So it would be s totally optional way of challenging yourself.
5 Likes
Biologicah
(Only occasionally interested in Thrive)
2
The Mimic Vacuole
I made this a while back, as it was a suggestion by @tjwhale to make my own funky little organelles to help out.
What it is
The mimic vacuole is a large, vacuole-like structure. Within it are 7 (possibly less for space reasons) mini-vacuoles.
What it does
It allows a microbe to imitate its predators/prey by secreting the agents the produce upon producing them. This would bee used for survival/hunting purposes.
How it works
The microbe would seek out the agents that they recognise as the predatorās/preyās upon detecting them. Once the microbe achieves this, the sample of the agent would be stored in a mini vacuole, which in turn would then be forced out of the āmainā vacuole. Upon being forced out into the cytoplasm, it would start producing the agent that it picked up. The microbe can then secrete it to disguise as the species they obtained the agent from.
Possible drawback(s)
Disguising may prevent microbes of the same species from recognising one another.
This may result in the microbe being unintentionally killed by either their own species or a predator of the species they are disguised as.
May be very demanding of resources for agent production.
Thats an awesome idea. It would allow a cell to counter its agent producing competitors.And is also a defense. I just imagine an entire playstyle based off of āstealingā your enemies agents. A good start to this thread. Also some weird/cool potential cells would come out of this too. SOme would use it to hide and graze on compounds, others would be more dangerous with it, like a predator that sneaks in and take out its prey this way.
I meant in the ocean, or anywhere else for that matter. It could possibly be in the clouds, but it would have to survive in some type of word suitable for it somehow. If they were to do that, what would their function be exactly?
Maybe we could make alternatives of chemoplast, thermoplast, chloroplast, mitochondria , etc. by editing/programming (with schemes) chemical reactions. It would also depend on what you can find in the current biome/environment.
I actually have been advocating for this since the old forum!
There are actual bacteria that eat electricity and survive off of it! Having an endosymbiotic bacteria that is able to respirate on electrons alone like Geobacter Metallireducens would be such a cool feature. Itād open up possibilities for new niches the likes of which weād never see on Earth.
Or just a planet with a thin enough atmosphere to be bombarded by solar radiation or even orbiting a black hole which gives off a buncha radiation by itself. Radiotrophs could even dig into the ground for radioactive materials.
Those are both awesome ideas. Thatās the kind of thing I wanted here. Radiotrophs and electricity eating bacteria and such would allow for much more interesting niches to appear and of course since this is thrive we can extrapolate them to both non-prokaryotes and prokaryotes. Though the real intent of this thread is to show an instance of it in real life and say how we could make it into an interesting game mechanic (the mechanic itself need not be entirely realistic). How would being an radiotrophic microbe differ from a photosynthesizing/thermosynthrsizing microbe gameplay wise is it just that by a different name? Do we want radiation spots aswell as heat and light spots? Would the radiation spots damage other microbes? How do you imagine it in game? Iām hoping we can āharvestā ideas from here.
Whatās with the weird spaces. Also yeah alternatives that use different compounds are on the table. For example one thing we almost added awhile back is a sulphur mitochondrion.
It used sulphur instead of glucose to produce atp. (Sulphur, not hydrogen sulfide)
Biologicah
(Only occasionally interested in Thrive)
20
These could be areas of particularly high background radiation.
I can imagine theyād naturally survive on the background radiation they receive, but be similar to plants due to how low background radiation is.
Radiation spots would be the equivalent to a tree growing on a mountain of nutrient-filled, moist soil with its own personal sun and carbon dioxide producer.