Into the Cell! - a science game - - - - - *To avoid lag: spam green flag/use small screen. *TurboWarp Link: https://turbowarp.org/1016590734 Have you ever wanted to see what it was like to be inside of a living cell? In this game, you get to explore inside an animal cell as a strand of mRNA on a journey to a ribosome! You will pass by many cellular organelles, enzymes, and proteins. Have fun! - - - - - How to play: -Control the player (an mRNA strand) using the arrow keys -You start with a three-nucleotide Poly-A tail. You can think of it as having three lives-- each nucleotide on your tail is one life. -Dodge the exonucleases. These are symbolized with a brown pacman-like shape. They will remove nucleotides from your tail if they reach you. You use loose one nucleotide each time you touch one. -Try to reach the ribosome before your Poly-A tail is completely removed by the exonucleases. - - - - - Credits: - All art & code is by me - The music is from Pixabay titled "Cinematic Documentary" - - - - - If you're curious: Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is a biological molecule that carries the coded message from DNA in the nucleus of the cell, out into the cytoplasm to a structure known as a ribosome. Ribosomes then use the mRNA's message to build proteins for the cell to use. Inside the cytoplasm, there are enzymes called exonucleases. These enzymes help recycle nucleotide bases (essentially the building blocks of the unique code of DNA and RNA) by removing them from the ends of mRNAs. To help protect the mRNA and ensure it can reach a ribosome without damaging the encoded message, mRNA molecules have a Poly-A tail. It is a long stretch of Adenine nucleotides which guard it from exonucleases. In real life, mRNA molecules can have hundreds of nucleotides in their Poly-A tails! In this game, for simplicity, you have three.
