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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals

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shvarz:
OK, here is a very brief metabolism that we can already start using.  I decided to go with the barest minimum for two reasons:
1. Don't want to intimidate people
2. We can always add stuff later as a way to introduce balance/diversity.

As a result, what you'll see below is only about 0.1% of all reactions that are happening in our bodies.  I assume that we'll have carbs/protein/fat system.  These turn up in bot's stomach, and then are digested.  What follows below is description of how bots can use them to extract energy.  Theoretically all these reactions are reversible, meaning that they can be used to create carbs/protein/fat, but the energy required to make stuff is always more than you get when you destroy stuff.  It is especially true for proteins, which require 10 times more energy to make them, than energy that is released when you destroy them.

Another note:  I'll use ATP to keep track of how much energy is generated.  Simply assume that ATPs will be converted to nrg with some coefficient.

So here it goes:

CARBS
' Note: carb degradation is the major route of energy production.  Fats and proteins join in as small streams join big river.

carb+7 H20=8 glucose
glucose = 2 pyruvate + 2 H2O + 8 ATP
pyruvate + 1.5 O2 = AcCoA + CO2 + 3H20 +6 ATP
AcCoA + 2 O2 = 2 CO2 +12 ATP

FAT

fat + ATP = fatCoA
fatCoA +7 O2=8 AcCoA + 42 H2O + 35 ATP
(see above for fate of AcCoA)

PROTEIN

protein = 8 am.acids
am.acid = pyruvate + NH4
(see above for fate of pyruvate, see below for fate of NH4)

NH4
'Note: This is very-very toxic.  If bot does not get rid of it, it gets really messed up.  It cannot be directly thrown out, it has to be converted to urea.

2 NH4 + CO2 + 3 ATP + H2O = urea
(urea is basically "waste", it can be discarded as such).

Final summary of how much energy you get from each type of food:

1 fat = -1+35+8x12=130
1 protein = 8x6+8x12-4x3=116
1 carb = 8x36=288

P.S: As I said, this is only the barest possible basics.  We can add more steps everywhere.  Two possible reasons to do that: a) make sim more complicated, leading to bigger diversity and b) balancing issues - adding more steps means that it takes longer to digest and requires more enzymes.

Numsgil:
Great stuff.

I thought fats give more energy than carbs.  Or is it just that the same amount of energy stored in fat takes up less space?

Keep in mind that all the reactions will probably need to be backward compatible.  So if we have A -> E +nrg and then later add A + B -> C, C+D->E + nrg we will still need to keep the A -> E reaction unless we want old bots to break.

But I think we could probably change the amount of energy a reaction gives without hurting anything.  if A->E + nrg turns into A->E + 1/16 nrg old bots will still work, but there's incentive to figure out the old way.

PurpleYouko:
So far we only seem to be looking at animal metabolism.

What about plants? they work in a slightly different way. They store cellulose and woody lignins as their body mass.

If we want to model real life then we have to allow robots to become plants too.

 :D  PY  :D

Numsgil:
Catabolism is breaking down glucose and sugars, etc. for energy.  Photosynthesis and chemotrophy will probably be forthcoming.  Hence: 'part 1'.

PurpleYouko:
That wasn't quite what I meant.

My point is that it takes entirely different digestion processes (and enzymes) to digest meat than it does to digest grass.

This means that robots can further specialize in eating veggies or hunting other "meat", Something totally lacking in the present system.

 :D  PY  :D

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