Board games - science style

Last week I was at Spiel, the largest board game convention of Europe in Essen, Germany. I played a shed load of board games with concepts ranging from collecting the most bananas to hanging up life sized washing. I also played a couple games with a scientific theme, which is a rare event in the board gaming world.

Can you save humanity?

One game that I played at the convention is really going viral at the moment (pun intended). This was Pandemic: Contagion. The game is a spin off from the board game Pandemic and you play as a specific disease attempting to rid the world of that troublesome humanity.

Whilst diseases are of course not sentient beings, it is a pretty novel idea to take on the role an infection. The game itself was ok, it didn't grab me at the first play, but maybe it will grow on me (yes, another intended pun). What I did really like with the game was the artwork, as accurate as you ever get with cartoon viruses. The components were also really cool as you get to play with petri dishes and to hold a fist full of viruses.

The original Pandemic is one of my favourite board games ever. A cooperative game where you fight the diseases together as a crack team of operatives and scientists, this time to save humanity! Again, the artwork is great and the four diseases are kinda realistic representations of microbes and viruses. The "Scientist"" character is also a fine example of promoting diversity in science, a white coated lady analysing her latest data. There are also a couple expansions to the base Pandemic game, one being called In the Lab. I've not played it myself but understand that here you can take a pause from racing around the world to enter the laboratory and develop new cures, cool!

Stereotypical spies

Another game I played at Spiel was the party game Spyfall. In this Russian produced game (just saying) there is of course a spy, who must uncover the location of the other players, whilst they each attempt to unmask the spy. The players are given cards with a location on them, one of which being a university. Now a university has many different departments as well as countless other student hangouts and from all these options Spyfall chooses to use a science lab. I say "science lab" as I'm actually not quite sure if it is a chemistry lab or more like a botanist's greenhouse. So let's just say it is something in the biological sciences area.

Unfortunately, the creators of Spyfall decided to go for the stereotypical depiction of an old crazy scientist for their game. The spy in the picture is disguised with a wig of white unkempt hair. One further point is that if this was a real situation then the spy would instantly be caught. Anyone that has worked in a university lab will know, old professors never set foot in the labs and would certainly not be seen getting their hands dirty doing some actual research.

An old board game that surely everyone knows is Cluedo. One of the characters/suspects in this game is Professor Plum. This learned man was first depicted as an absent minded, aged scientist. Not really pushing the imagination of the players here or indeed the boundaries of science. The character has, however, gone through a number of transformations over the years in different editions. His job has varied from archaeologist to psychiatrist to video game designer. In the latest interpretation he has lost his academic title and with it has perhaps lost the chance to persuade generations more of impressionable young scientists to solve murders, perhaps.

The portrayal of scientists in board games has come a long way since Plum's days but maybe still has a way to go. I do really believe that chemistry and science is a massively under used theme for games. What could be more fun than beating your friends in the hunt to synthesise a new molecule or to write the best grant proposal, oh yeah I see it now. If anyone else knows of any other science themed board games then please let me know, I'd love to try them out.

The making of a cover

I'm on the cover! One of my scientific ambitions has just been fulfilled.

From the moment I began my PhD I had but one aim... finish the PhD. Well I managed that last year, but I also had other ambitions for my scientific career and one of them was to have my work featured on a journal cover. The first time I dived into the scientific literature and saw these cover designs, I knew straight away that I had found my calling in life. Ok, so this is a slight exaggeration, but I do think they are really cool.

Authors use all sorts of ways to demonstrate their work visually. But obviously some fields of research lend themselves more easily to the use of pretty pictures than others. My work with protein interactions was certainly one of these areas.

The first sketch

It was in July last year that I had a break through. My proteins were binding in the way that I wanted and things were finally all coming together. As a quick summary, the work involved attaching 5 carbohydrates to a non-toxic mutant of the cholera toxin protein. That modified protein could then be used as an inhibitor of matching size to the original toxin. The carbohydrates of the inhibitor bind to the wild-type cholera toxin, therefore inhibiting the wild-type from sticking to your cells.

I was sat in the back of a seminar a week or so after getting my latest results, when my thoughts wandered onto how I could visualise the work. In my mind there was only one way to show the interactions and that was by anthropomorphising the proteins. I sketched down a first rough cartoon. The noble inhibitor was obviously going to try to catch the evil toxin. I don't remember much of the seminar, but I think this was still time well spent.

The modified protein, our hero, had 5 large arms to catch the bad guy, oh and a police badge giving him the authority to hunt down these no-good toxins. As for his nemesis, well this guy had to wear the stereotypical black stripes and face mask of a robber as well as holding onto a swag bag to keep all his loot. As if this did not yet make it completely clear that he was not to be trusted, he also has evil eyebrows, a sure sign of a villain.

My initial sketch was not complete fantasy. The 5 arms represented the addition of carbohydrates to the protein. The swag bag represented for the toxic subunit that the wild-type protein possesses. The big googly eyes represented, oh no wait, they were just big googly eyes.

Writing the paper for this work was put on a list of things to do for quite a while and with it went the protein policeman. I was away at international conferences (holidays), I then had my thesis to write and after that a change of country. So it wasn't until February that the first draft of the paper appeared and as with any publication, a TOC (table of contents) image was needed. Here, the protein enemies resurfaced.

From notebook to TOC

The cholera toxin protein is fairly well known, with many crystal structures. Therefore, it was quite an easy task to scan through the protein data bank and pick out a nice structure as a starting point. A ribbon representation of the protein structure was chosen to start with as I believe this is the most recognisable protein depiction. Using Pymol, I then built in the alkane chains and added the carbohydrates around the protein. There was no choice for the colours, there is a standard scheme in the Turnbull lab; red = cholera toxin, orange = non-toxic mutant. The proteins were structurally accurate, the eyes and mouths were added for effect.

The initial design got the thumbs up from the lab group although it certainly needed a little refining. So after trying a few different positions and angles, the protein ribbon was changed in favour of a surface representation and a decent image was taking shape. The mask was added back in for the villain. A whistle and a police badge were given to our hero. Not the most serious piece of work, but we were confident that the actual research was good enough so that we could relax a little with a silly image.

From TOC to cover

I really wanted to try for a journal cover. We had some great work (I thought) and a great idea to build the TOC image into a full picture. The paper had been submitted to Angewandte and so the image had to be based on their standard circular design.

We went through 15 versions of bacteria for a background. Red, yellow and blue bacteria, some more realistic than others. I also tried out a Petri dish with bacteria growing across the plate but a consensus was made for an image with some large green bugs. The proteins stood out in the foreground and the colours worked well. Bacteria was used because the work is about protein modification and binding, and of course we couldn't perform any of the work (or have need to) without some little E. coli factories churning out all that protein.

A final change was to put some actual science into the image. Straight through the middle, separating the two enemies is a curve from one of the ELLA (enzyme-linked lectin assay) experiments reported in the paper. It gives the inhibitory potential of our good guy binding to the baddie. A fitting central divide.

All the best pictures have something a little bit ambiguous about them and here I feel that confusion is provided subtly by the police badge. The acronym refers to the top detective agency at Leeds University. CTPD, of course, standing for the Cholera Toxin Police Department. At this institution they only hire the most specialised proteins to catch the toxins.

The paper was accepted with great reviews and even recommended as a VIP paper. Excellent news! After much celebration we submitted the cover design. The editors were very quick to respond and accepted our image. More excellent news! I was amazed by how incredibly smoothly everything had gone. For my first first-author research paper this was fantastic.

I'm not sure if the image is quite bad enough to make it into TOCROFL, that will be the aim for my next paper. And after that my next scientific ambition is to get an SI unit named after myself, so we'll see how that works out.

You can find the paper "here" and our awesome cover design "here".

Musical science and mini engineering

They never disappoint. They never fail to impress. There's always one that will make a smile appear on the face of even the most miserable of chemists. Of course, I'm talking about the fabulous cover art of Angewandte. (I should get paid for saying these things, er hey Angewandte if you are reading this...)

If you ever tire of scanning through yet another table of contents, then pop over to Angewandte for a quick peek at their gallery of cover art. Every week they put out not just one, but five covers! Because as we all know, a magazine obviously has five fronts. Well, there's the actual front, the inside front, the inside out, the back, the front back, the back to front, oh and probably some others... But this week there were a couple that caught my eye and surely the eyes of every miniature scientist out there in journal land.

Musical chemicals

Firstly, there was the appearance of some wonderfully entertaining chemicals. Two pairs of blue and yellow guanine musicians just don't seem to be able to get the hang of their instruments. Struggling together, they are actually looking quite bored. Perhaps this is because they are only cartoons with no musical knowledge, or just maybe it is because they are missing the input of a little dancing blue circle! With the crowd now joining in, the duets bond together to form a quartet and everyone is happy again.

What a fantastic analogy this is for the conversion of GG base pairs into guanine-quadruplex structures after interacting with cations (our little blue friend). The best part of this cover by far is the couple of gate crashers at the bottom, trying to catch a glimpse of the show - but sorry, they've already bonded, no room for you guys.

Chemical engineering

The second cover this week showed off some little chemical builders. With their little hard hats, their little hammers and tiny walkie talkies, surely this is how synthesis will really happen in the near future. These engineers have been working away on an old worn out porphyrin ring and have converted it into a new shiny carbaporphyrinoid. Now take away that pyrrole ring and throw it on the molecular scrap heap. The first structure of its kind and made by mini (more like angstrom sized) scientists, what's not to love.

The Journal of Let's Get Physical Chemistry

A new journal has been announced filling a much needed hole in the science publishing market. Are you a super cool prof that just can't wait to showcase your latest sexy undergrads or make up for your scientific inadequacies with macho bravado? If so then this is the place for you!

For more amazing sexy science and other communication failures then check out the Journal of Proteomics (now without that TOC image).

Building nanoplanets in Nature Nanotechnology

The guys over at Nature have either got themselves some really big nanoparticles, or a really tiny desk… On this desk lies a tube of DNA: The All Purpose Adhesive, apparently. Surely DNA’s main purpose is to encode life and all the wonders that brings with it. But the latest cover from Nature Nanotechnology would have you believe otherwise.

 

DNA Mechano kit

Is this a glimpse into the future of nanotechnology or mere science fiction? Nanoparticles that we can construct just as easily as any Ikea flat pack or DIY project? DNA in a tube? The illustration shows us a box full of potential building blocks, much like an old Mechano kit, ready to be ransacked by curious children. Rods of different lengths, shiny silver balls and odd little stripy green and blue particles overflow the tool box and invite a creative mind to get building. A few new creations have been left out on the table for us to inspect or possibly the authors have not yet cleared away their Christmas decorations. 

The blueprints on this front cover are really nice touch. Designs for the structure of a nucleotide sequence as well as a DNA origami scheme are shown, reminding us all of the importance of good planning. More chemists should keep notes on blueprints, much more fun than an old lab book.

But what about that tube of DNA. That vital component. That all purpose adhesive. The tube says that the glue is both permanent and adjustable, surely making it the wonder material of the future. Maybe one day DNA assembly will indeed be as simple as squeezing some out of a bottle and adding the components you want. At the current rate of progress in this field, I wouldn’t bet against it.

Nano nano nano

The actual article demonstrates another step forward in DNA technology. The team from Munich have combined the well-known self-assembly of DNA with quantum dots, metal nanoparticles and organic dyes to form a range of nanoclusters. They demonstrated a new level of control over the size and positioning of the structures, using DNA strands to precisely arrange components over a 200 nm scale. The new assemblies were deemed to have a “planet-satellite-type structure”, which made me wonder why they didn’t go for some outer space themed cover art. However, the use of nanoplanets made with nanoglue may have resulted in these heavenly bodies exploding from buzzword overload.