Charles Darwin Would Love to Play Spore

Spore is a game made by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. In 2008, Spore was released for Windows and Macintosh. Today, the game is available for Wii, PC Games, Web, Xbox 360, PS3, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and Mobile.

The game has many genres like RPG, strategy and action. This game lets the player have control over the development of an organism from the cellular level to a whole and intelligent creature. The player can make the organism evolve and to explore water, land and the space between the star systems within a galaxy.

This is a very fun game that teaches players the most important ideas of Charles Darwin like The Survival of The Fittest and how Natural Selection favors certain organisms to evolve and survive through many stages (generations) until he becomes so strong that he can conquer the galaxy.

The Cell Stage

This the first stage of the game, teaches the scientific concept of panspermia (in Greek pan means “all” and spermia means “seed.” The hypothesis of panspermia tells that the life on Earth originated from seeds of life that are all over the universe). The concept of panspermia is shown by the crash of a meteor in the ocean of a planet giving origin to a prokaryotic (single cell) organism.

The organism has to evolve in order to progress. The player has to guide the prokaryote through a liquid environment, where it can find other simple organism to eat or big predators that can eat him. The player can decide if the creature will eat plants or meat. Later on, the creature evolves and can eat both.

The eating habits that the organism acquires in the cell stage directly influences the next stage (creature stage). Only feeding structures (for plants, meat or both) that the creature uses in the cell stage will be available for the creature stage. However, the player can change the feeding structures of the creature before entering the creature stage.

As the creature evolves, the player will have to add legs for the transition to land. When the creature is out from the water will join a nest with other nest mates.

The Creature Stage

The creature stage contains different animal species. This stage shows and teaches the distinction of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. In other words, the player can find animals that eat meat, plants or both. In this stage the player has to take care of the health and hunger of the creature.

When the creature explores the land will find other kinds of creatures with their nests. Some creatures will be powerful and will have los of babies or others will be weak. The player can decide if the creature will be friendly or attack the creatures. If the player is friendly to the other creatures, they will be friendly with him, but if the player attacks them, the creatures will get very angry and attack him.

This is a very good way to teach the concept of Natural Selection to the players. The most powerful creatures are the ones that have more mates and can reproduce more successfully than others. The players will learn the importance of “The Survival of the Fittest” between different species on land.

Equally important, the player will learn that the only way of species to survive is in a group. Like Charles Darwin would say, they will never make it alone. He will learn this by socializing and hunting with other creatures.

The more time that the player socializes with other creatures; the more points that he will get and his DNA will become stronger. The interaction with other creatures will allow the player to form a pack that will follow him and help him to fight or to heal.

The importance of reproduction is observed in the game. Reproduction has a very important role in evolution. In the game, the player has to mate his creature with other members of the nest (they have to be from the same species otherwise they cannot mate).

After the creature mates, the player can change the creature and make it stronger and totally different from the old version. This will show how a new and a stronger generation can be the result of a successful mating.

The creature’s brain will evolve and become more intelligent as the player socializes and hunts with other creatures. When the creature intelligence has reached a certain point, the player enters the next stage.

The Tribal Stage

In this stage the biological development of the creature stops. The player cannot longer control the individual creature. From here on, the player has to take care of the whole species or tribe. The player will have a hut and a pack of evolved creatures to play.

The creatures can interact with other tribes and learn to speak. Other creatures can be added to the pack like pets that will make eggs for food and the creatures can wear clothes, use tools and musical instruments.

Creatures give birth to babies that will become members of the tribe. When they grow, they can gather food, attack other tribes, hunt for food and become friend of other tribes.

The player will face 5 different tribes. Three tribes are aggressive and the player can decide to be friendly or to attack them. A piece of a totem pole is built for every tribe that is destroyed or became a friend.

The sculpture will allow the player to increase the tribe population number or will provide more tools for the population. When the totem pole has 5 pieces and the player’s tribe has become the dominant tribe, the player can move to the next stage.

The Civilization Stage

In this stage, the player’s tribe has divided into different nations, like in reality. The player controls one of the nations. The purpose of this stage is to get control of the whole planet. The player can decide to conquer the planet by the economy, religion or military.

If the player wants to conquer the planet by the economy, he can trade and buy cities. In the pet hand if the player wants to control the planet by the religion, he will have to convert all the cities to the player by religious domination.

The player can mark his territory by making vehicles and buildings and adding specific color to define the territory boundary. The territory will increase as the player gains more power by conquering cities and nations. When the player conquers the planet, he will move to the next and final stage.

The Space Stage

In this stage, the player will spread through the galaxy with the purpose of colonizing planets. The player will be able to manipulate the planets by altering the ecosystem, temperature and the atmospheric conditions to kill the inhabitants in order to conquer the planets. He can also make changes in the planet to make it a better habitat.

The player can abduct creatures and transport them to different planets to test the environmental conditions to create ecosystems. In addition, the player can trigger life in a planet by placing a monolith.

The player can interact with other ‘space civilizations’ that are called empires and form allies. He can conquer the galaxy by creating a federation or an interstellar war.

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

I went to the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology laboratory of Dr. El-Sayed to take some photos that will show how technology is used in the University of Maryland to do scientific research. I also used the one thirds rule of photography discussed in the course Information 3.0. Bioinformatics is the latest field that evolved from Biology and the technology that is used is the latest too.

Dr. El-Sayed laboratory works with three pathogens: Trypanosoma brucei, Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania major. Trypanosoma is the agent that causes sleeping sickness and continues to affect populations in Africa and South America. The main goal of the lab is to sequence the Trypanosoma genome to find a way to make a vaccine that will exterminate the pathogen and won't harm the human host.

Laboratory assistant of Dr. El-Sayed performing research.

The lab is currently working with a technique that is called the Yeast 2 Hybrid System. The purpose of the assay is to find a Trypanosoma protein that is affecting a human protein. When the protein is found, the team can sequence it and analyze it. Then they can compare the sequence with sequences of other species to see what the protein does and ways to target it.

This machine transfers cells that are infected with Trypanosoma to a medium where only the cells that are affected by the Trypanosoma protein can survive. Then, the cells grow and can be sequenced.

This photo shows that many the machine can tranfer many plates at the same time. In fact, 200 plates can be transferred each time.

The rectangular plate shows the cells that the machine transfers to a different medium. Every dot represent a colony of cells that only grows if is infected by the Trypanosomaprotein. Only the ones that grow are visible to the human eye.

Analyzing Scientific Shots

The evolution of science was always link to journalism. Journalists let people know about scientific discoveries and new technology. Journalists use their cameras to capture and reinforce a story. However, not every individual can take a perfect photograph.

The quality of the image depends of the individual’s performance. Photography is an art that requires an artist. The photographer has to learn and practice how to take a good picture. Like artists, they have to practice to improve their work.

To take pictures of a lab or scientists is not easy. One reason might be because the labs have very big machines that can cover most of screen. However, to take pictures of smaller objectives like scientists working is easier than from big machines.

For Example, the photo below is very well taken. The photo is a very good example of the rule of thirds (never place your objective in the center of the screen).The photographer focused the scientist on the left of the screen and the coverslip a little below the center of the screen In addition, the hand of the scientist was located on the left of the screen.



The photographer gave emphasis to the hand holding the cover slit by getting a close up of the hand holding the coversilp. Also, the colors are very clear and show a very clean shot. I can tell that the photographer used a very nice camera.

The photographer edited the photo very well. He increased the intensity of the colors of the scientist and made the background colors a little blurry. The objective of the photographer is very easy to visualize and to understand.

In the other hand, the photo below is not so good like the previous photo. The photographer used the rule of thirds by putting the scientist on the right of the screen, but not enough. If the photographer located the scientist a little more on the right, the picture would look better.



In addition, the background at the right of the girl makes the picture look low quality. The picture shows that the photographer objective was the scientist, but maybe that was not the case. If the main objective were the hands, the photographer should have focused the hands at the right and not at the center of the screen.

If the main objective were the hands, the photographer violated the rule of thirds because he located the scientist’s hands at the center of the screen. Even, if the hands were not the main objective, the shot would have been better if the photographer put the scientist all the way at the right of the screen.

Equally important, I can tell that this picture was not edited well enough. For example, the colors are not so clear like the previous photo. In the previous photo, the colors were edited to emphasize the view of the scientist instead of the background. However, in this photo, the scientist and background share the same intensity of colors. If the photographer gave to the scientist higher color intensity, the photo would look much better.