Design, engineering and utility of biotic games

Abstract

Games are a significant and defining part of human culture, and their utility beyond pure entertainment has been demonstrated with so-called 'serious games'. Biotechnology--despite its recent advancements--has had no impact on gaming yet. Here we propose the concept of 'biotic games', i.e., games that operate on biological processes. Utilizing a variety of biological processes we designed and tested a collection of games: 'Enlightenment', 'Ciliaball', 'PAC-mecium', 'Microbash', 'Biotic Pinball', 'POND PONG', 'PolymerRace', and 'The Prisoner's Smellemma'. We found that biotic games exhibit unique features compared to existing game modalities, such as utilizing biological noise, providing a real-life experience rather than virtual reality, and integrating the chemical senses into play. Analogous to video games, biotic games could have significant conceptual and cost-reducing effects on biotechnology and eventually healthcare; enable volunteers to participate in crowd-sourcing to support medical research; and educate society at large to support personal medical decisions and the public discourse on bio-related issues.

Device and programming abstractions for spatiotemporal control of active micro-particle swarms

“…1,15,18,26 Furthermore such systems can be used for STEM education or research at the intersection of computer and life-sciences. 52,53 Compared to previous interactive biology setups, 30,31,38,39 this system adds a programmable layer to the BPU with feedback controls, easing application development. The game application presented here suggests that this setup could be seen as a biotechnological analogue of the early electronic microcomputer and its programming capabilities.…”

“…The synergistic integration of global and local stimulus modalities (side LEDs, projector, and microfluidic chip mazes) combinatorically increased the possibilities to manipulate and interact with microscopic swarms compared to previous systems. 7,30,31,[37][38][39]50 Having multiple stimulus modalities can also greatly accelerate specific tasks compared to single modality stimulation, e.g. the command fastCompress, which combines the LED stimulus with a projected barrier, is at least an order of magnitude faster than the command compress, which only uses a shrinking projected barrier (Fig.…”

“…20,21,28 For microbiological swarms, "interactive biology" setups have enabled both professionals and non-experts to interact and experiment with swarm agents in real-time for research and edutainment purposes, e.g., through biology cloud experimentation laboratories, 29,30 museum exhibits, 31 or biotic games. 32,33,38 While most of these platforms had been developed ground-up to support a single application, more expressive, general purpose setups with a larger degree of programmability are desirable for applications involving swarm control of microscopic agents. For example, some setups use global stimuli (e.g.…”

“…1). We combined several existing biotic processing units (BPUs 30,38 ) from other experimental 7,37 and interactive biology 31,39 setups to create a single highly expressive BPU (Fig. 2).…”

Microfluidic assembly kit based on laser-cut building blocks for education and fast prototyping

“…Furthermore, microfluidics will not only be an important platform in cell biology, materials science, chemistry, physics, fluid mechanics, and engineering disciplines but also giving its interdisciplinary nature, it is also a great learning opportunity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education for students in K-12 and undergraduate levels. 12 Hands-on teaching and gamification 37 of learning has been proven beneficial, 38 and experiments such as electrolysis of water 39 or analytical devices 40 have been proposed. Bardin and Lee 41 recently proposed a whole series of experiments focusing on various age groups and featuring learning opportunities about fabrication, droplet generation, and flow characteristics.…”