Code center > Suggestions

Compartmentalization of the Bots

(1/5) > >>

Numsgil:
Elite mentioned this in passing I think, and it made me remember an idea I've thought of before but I don't think I've ever laid onto paper.

Presently bots are considered to be homogenous.  All their body, nrg, poison, etc. is all stored in a large and uniform gooey substance.

I propose a way (the mechanics of which I have no idea) to create different 'sacs' to contain various substances in the bot.

Here's what I consider to be the base level upon which bots may build:
"Cell Wall" - Simply the membrane seperating the outside and the inside.  I would imagine it would be into this "sac" that you'd want to put your slime and shell.

"Cytoplasm" - "Inside" the cell.

"Outside" - a way to expel things and absorb things from the environment.

Everything else would need to be specified by a bot.

Sacs could be nested arbitrarily.  You could have a "Mitochondrial" sac inside the Cytoplasm, or even on the cell wall (though I have no idea what the effect of that would or should be.)  A sac assigned to the "outside" would probably create a new bot (probably without any DNA, and so probably following the same rules as corpses for decay, etc.) containing perhaps nrg for storage or waste.

These sacs would seperate various chemicals from each other.  Poison probably shouldn't be mixing with your food supply.  You could create an empty sac on the cell wall and use it to eat another bot, then move that sac into the cytoplasm for digestion.  DNA could be kept in its own sac to have stronger control over mutation rates and prevent it from otherwise being damaged.

Moving substances across a sac barrier would probably cost nrg (or may generate nrg if you're moving from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration).

shvarz:
It's not clear to me what you mean by sacs?  How can you "have a sac on cell wall"?

Pictures might help.

And I'm not sure what specific goal they would serve.  I understand about different compartments for metabolites, but the proposed system for metabolism has these compartments built in already.  DNA is just an abstract piece of code right now and has no "physical representation" in DB universe, how can we move it into a sac?  And why?

Elite:
I think Nums means phagocytosis by the sac on the cell wall  :)

Don't real microorganisms have some form of compartmentalisation Shvars?
 - Nucleus
 - Vaccuole (for plants)
 - Various structures such mitochondria
 etc.

Maybe mutations could be accumulated (or accelerated) by exposure to free radicals (or DB equivelant) - maybe some chemicals could be mutagenic?

Numsgil:
The most obvious consequence I can think of would be order of defense.  Your cell wall will be attacked first, your cytoplasm second, and any internal membranes third.

I imagine you'd have to do a certain amount of damage to the cell wall before you could breach the internal cytoplasm, and a certain amount of the cytoplasm would need to be compromised to reach any of the more critical compartments.

shvarz:
Hm, OK, we are going out of biology field with this :)  In real cells a break in a cell membrane would mean certain death for the cell, so this sounds silly.

But even if we stray away from biology (which is fine) I am still not sure what the advantage of having these compartments would be.  We don't seem to need them now, so if we add them, then we would also have to add something that would make them necessary.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page