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Anyway, can discuss here if ppl want for now. Can’t post endgame yet anyway.
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lol you wanted to get one more fun fact inIt is kinda interesting. Sorry for forgetting them in them in future
Had to do it. Take what info you like from it, even if it’s none!
Especially with Pie’s role. I think a normal investigative JOAT would’ve been better here, Whiteflame. The gifter version allows for so many confirmations.
Maybe so. Don’t think it had that many confirmations tbh, but we can discuss that later.
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Mikal (2/3): Mharman, Pie
Another interesting fact. We tend to think of bacteria and viruses getting more deadly or dangerous as they evolve, but some actually appear to get weaker, or at least induce death less readily. Case in point: Syphilis. It used to go through several stages of development in the body leading to some nasty neurological issues that you hear about from famous past rulers, but it almost never does that anymore. It’s adapted to humans in a way that makes it less noticeable.
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@Lunatic
@ILikePie5
@Mharman
@Mikal
@iamanabanana
Size is no measure
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Onto DP3!
Dead Players:
Savant - Salmonella - Enabler (Doctor) - Town (Lynched DP1)
Casey_Risk - Pseudomonas - Pathologist - Town (Killed NP1)
Lynched DP2:
WyIted - You are Mycobacterium! You are a water and soulborne microbe that is mostly well known for the illnesses it causes, particularly Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. What distinguishes all of them is a waxy, lipid-rich cell wall, which imparts a particularly strong resistance to immune cell responses and means infections with Mycobacterium tend to last. You are the Avoider! Each night, you may target another player. If that player targets you with any night action, it will not work. You may not target the same player on back-to-back nights. You win with the Town.
Died in the Night NP2:
Earth - You are Staphylococcus! You are regularly found in soil, but are mainly known for your role on human skin as an all-too-common protective resident. You have a very bad habit of getting into other places, and some of your species, particularly Staphyloccocus aureus, are notorious for picking up some antibiotic resistances that make you very difficult to kill. That balances your with your role as one of our body’s greatest protectors, so we take the bad with the good. You are Vanilla! You have no special abilities, but you have your vote and your voice. You win with the Town.
Remaining Players:
1. iamanabanana
2. Lunatic
3. Mharman
4. ILikePie5
5. Mikal
With 5 alive, it takes 3 votes to lynch. The DP ends in 72 hours on Tuesday, June 17 @ 7:30 AM EST.
Additional information:
- Pie has been SILENCED! He may vote one time today, and he may not post otherwise.
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Votes:
Pie (1/4): WyIted
WyIted (4/4): Pie, Earth, Luna, Banana
WyIted was lynched! He was... innocent!
Submit your night actions! The NP will end in 24 hours, or at 8:15 PM on Saturday, June 14.
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Pie (1/4): WyIted
WyIted (3/4): Pie, Earth, Luna
We tend to think of plating as a set of Petri dishes (those circular plastic holders with a solid ring of agar [basically gelatin made from seaweed with a bunch of nutrients in it]) as the way to plate bacteria, but that’s less and less the case. We make tubes of agar and tip them as they’re solidifying to make slants, which take up far less space and allow you to more easily test for what happens in anaerobic conditions by stabbing down when you inoculate. There are also things called Petrifilms that are little squares only a little thicker than a piece of paper with a plastic film over the top. Just lift the film up, add a certain volume of bacteria, and settle the film down on most of them (some require a stamp). They all take up far less room in incubators.
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Pie (1/4): WyIted
WyIted (2/4): Pie, Earth
Out to lunch so I’ll keep this brief. Gram stains aren’t only made indeterminate based on the type of bacteria. Bacillus, a gram positive organism, gets indeterminate if you grow it for long enough because its vegetative cells start to become porous to the stain, so they look both pink and purple on a slide.
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@WyIted
Methylene BlueIsn't this what everyone is taking lately as a nootropics slash all around miracle drug that cures everything
Heard something about that. Doesn't seem particularly dangerous, but I wouldn't trust it for anything beyond its on-label use for a blood disorder and some staining.
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Pie (1/4): WyIted
WyIted (1/4): Pie
More fun with enrichment/isolation. One of my favorite media types is Eosin Methylene Blue Agar (EMB), which actually looks kinda purplish. I won't go into the specifics of it, but it has two different dyes in it that can precipitate out based on the amount of acid the organisms growing on them produce - Eosin and Methylene Blue. If they don't produce much, they can just look transparent or colorless (e.g. Salmonella), if they produce a little more they turn pink by precipitating the Eosin (e.g. Enterobacter), a more than that and they turn purple by precipitating the Methylene Blue, and if they produce a lot of acid, they'll produce a metallic, "fly butt green" sheen around them (e.g. E. coli). Tells you a lot on one plate and the colors really pop.
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@Earth
@Lunatic
@ILikePie5
@Mharman
@iamanabanana
Divide and conquer!
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The sun rises. Another DP begins.
Lynched:
Savant - You are Salmonella! You are one of the most infamous foodborne microbes around, wreaking havoc on the guts of many mammals. A major problem in chickens especially as Salmonella enterica, you are particularly adept at modifying the environment of the gut around you to suit your purposes by modifying both host responses and available nutrients, facilitating the survival of only those microbes that help you. Many microbes wouldn’t thrive in the gut without you. You are the Enabler! When you die, the role "Doctor" will cease to function for all players. You win with the Town.
Died in the Night:
Casey_Risk - You are Pseudomonas! You are found in water and soil. You’re mainly known in medical circles for the opportunistic infections you cause, particularly as Pseudomonas aeruginosa in burn and surgical patients. Mostly, though, you’re known for your amazing capacity to decompose organic compounds, including plastics and hydrocarbons. Because you break things down so easily, you’re the Pathologist! Each night, you may visit a dead player and receive a copy of all feedback messages received by that player over the course of the game. Any messages that player received from me will be conveyed to you. You win with the Town.
Remaining Players:
1. iamanabanana
2. Lunatic
3. Earth
4. Mharman
5. ILikePie5
6. Mikal
7. WyIted
With 7 alive, it takes 4 votes to lynch. The DP ends in 72 hours on Monday, June 16 @ 9 AM EST.
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Final Vote Count:
Banana (1/5): Savant
Savant (5/5): WyIted, Pie, Luna, Banana, Earth
WyIted (1/5):: Mharman
Savant was lynched! He was... innocent!
Submit your night actions! The NP will end in 24 hours, or at 10:30 AM on Friday, June 12.
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Votes:
Banana (1/5): Savant
Savant (3/5): WyIted, Pie, Luna
WyIted (1/5):: Mharman
I'm not sure if this is a broad characterization of diseases, at least not with these terms, but I think of disease causing organisms as being "smart" or "dumb," and it all comes back to virulence factors and how they serve the organism itself. For example, I'm fascinated by Ebola, but I think it's a dumb virus. It causes very prominent symptoms that lead people to isolate the victim, kills its victims rapidly so that they cannot interact with as many people, and can only spread by contact with blood. By contrast, I'd say Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a very smart virus. It takes a long time to cause symptoms, it's deadly but only because of other infections (not directly as a result of what it does), and it's subtle enough that it may go unnoticed. It also has more avenues to spread, albeit monitoring for it has gotten better.
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Banana (1/5): Savant
Savant (1/5): WyIted
WyIted (1/5):: Mharman
Too early for microbiology facts, but wanted to catch this up.
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Pie (2/5): Savant, Casey
Last post for the night. Virulence factors are the collection of traits that an organism bears that make them effective at infecting someone and causing disease. This can include anything that helps attach to the outside of and enter the target cell, any toxins the organism produces, anything used to protect itself once it's inside (that includes a capsule or a spore), anything used to break down the host, and other factors like the means to gather essential nutrients. These are going to be pretty specific to a microbe's needs, so some will have more and some will only need to focus on a few.
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Earth (1/5): Savant
Pie (2/5): WyIted, Casey
Another example of a strange interaction: Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV, causes mononucleosis) infects about 95% of adults by the time they're 35 and then lies dormant in the B cells. It can be activated by a lot of things, but the most interesting case (at least for me) is malaria. In combination, these can cause some severe cancers called Burkitt's Lymphoma. We're still not entirely sure why, whether it's the virus being activated to do something or the malaria parasite. And EBV isn't done being weird. It can also cause Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, a particularly insidious cancer of the throat that is believed to be associated with the virus and diet, though it's unclear what aspects of diet affect it. It is far more common in China, but also places like Greenland.
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Approximately 12.5 hours remain in the DP.
Votes:
Earth (1/5): Savant
Pie (2/5): WyIted, Casey
WyIted (1/5): Pie
There are some really odd interactions between microbes that scientists are still struggling to fully explain. For example, while everyone may be familiar with Hepatitis A, B and C, there's also a Delta virus that's been called a "satellite virus". It doesn't produce everything a virus needs to get by, usually just the coat protein and a few minor proteins, so it requires a parent virus to replicate. That's usually Hepatitis B, and for some reason, it makes infections of the liver far worse than with Hep B alone.
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Votes:
Earth (1/5): Savant
Pie (1/5): WyIted
WyIted (1/5): Pie
A bit more on prions. While viruses have certainly created some interesting conversation regarding what the traits of life are and how many have to be satisfied to qualify, prions are even more simplistic: just a single, misfolded protein. The reason this is found in brain tissue is because it transits there and interacts with correctly folded versions of itself found in the brain, essentially replicating by misfolding those proteins to make more of itself. Also, prions are incredibly hard to kill. Unlike the vast majority of proteins, they can survive temperatures above 350°F, direct bombardment by ionizing radiation, exposure to disinfectants like bleach, and even proteolytic (protein degrading) enzymes. Good luck getting rid of them.
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Earth (1/5): Savant
Savant (1/5): WyIted
I’m sure some of you have heard of prions, probably in the context of Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. You usually get them from ingesting infected tissue, so brain matter (cannibalism is associated with one called Kuru in New Guinea). CJD is a pickle, though. We don’t know how it spreads in most instances. There seems to be some genetic propensity for it, but it occurs sporadically as well, so often with no known cause. They still ask about it every time you give blood, though.
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WyIted (2/5): Mharman, Savant
Savant (1/5): WyIted
For fans of The Last of Us, Cordyceps does kind of work like that. It zombifies insects, though it’s mainly known for its effect on ants, and its main goal is to get the insect to climb to a certain point on a given surface, kill the organism, and fruit to spread its spores. Infecting mammals, much less humans, isn’t a likely proposition but it’s still pretty gruesome.
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Votes:
Mharman (1/5): Savant
WyIted (1/5): Mharman
Savant (2/5): Pie, WyIted
Both fungi and bacteria have spores, but the former is used chiefly for reproduction while the latter is used in times of stress to survive. They are both pretty tough, but bacterial spores have a big edge in that department. There are similar forms for other microorganisms, like cysts in Giardia, that are just incredibly tough to kill and make them very good for infectivity.
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Votes:
Mharman (2/5): WyIted, Savant
WyIted (1/5): Mharman
Savant (1/5): Pie
We talk a lot about how there are so many bacteria in the human body (FYI, it's approx. 39 trillion, more than the 30 trillion human cells we have), but we're also composed of a lot of virus. Approximately 8% of our genome is composed of viral sequences, which are derived from human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) that integrated at some point in our species' history and continue to get passed down.
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@AdaptableRatman
He baited me into fullclaiming when Ive been replaced, hoping I hadnt read any and wouldnt check.
I disagree.
This is cheating no matter how you view it. I am also cheating by posting here but I genuinely do not care.
Please stop.
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@AdaptableRatman
And, again, you are not a part of this game, so please stop posting here.
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@AdaptableRatman
It is not and has never been against the rules of mafia to note whether someone is or has been online recently.
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@AdaptableRatman
Not sure what he did that would earn him a modkill, but you were replaced due to your absence this game.
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Votes:
Mharman (2/5): WyIted, Savant
Mikal (1/5): Mharman
Savant (1/5): Pie
More interesting isolations! Isolating Bacillus is really simple: take a pinch of soil, stick it in some water, and boil it for about 5-10 minutes. Then just plate a bit of that suspension on nutrient agar. You'll get plenty of the characteristic Bacillus spreading colonies because its spore coat is so tough that it can stand up to those high temperatures and come back swinging. They've actually brought Bacillus spores into space and exposed them to the vacuum of space and copious amounts of solar radiation. Many still survived.
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Votes:
Mharman (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (1/5): Mharman
Savant (1/5): Pie
If we're talking about the biggest killers among diseases in history, it's a four-way race: Smallpox, Tuberculosis, Plague and Malaria, so a virus, two bacteria and a parasite. And while all of them have some claim to the top spot, the estimated winner (not like we can track back far enough to get a good count) is Tuberculosis, as it's estimated to have taken 1 billion lives since it's been around. There are other diseases that can claim to have killed more over a shorter span of time, but nothing beats TB in endurance.
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Votes:
Mharman (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (1/5): Mharman
WyIted (1/5): Pie
Keep the series going before I nod off. Azotobacter is easy to isolate if you give it a carbon rich medium sans a nitrogen source and plenty of access to atmosphere. It can fix nitrogen (i.e. use nitrogen gas as a source of nitrogen) very well, so just let it marinate a bit. And you can even tell that it’s growing: the organism has this thick capsule around its cells, and it grows as this gummy ring around the top of the flask. Easy to isolate as slimy colonies from there.
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Votes:
Mharman (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (1/5): Mharman
WyIted (3/5): Pie, Earth, Savant
More on isolation/enrichment. You can enrich for Clostridium pretty easily if you just put some soil (almost always has spores) in a vial with some cellulose as the sole carbon source. They’re one of the few organisms that can degrade it.
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Votes:
Mharman (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (2/5): Mharman, Savant
WyIted (1/5): Pie
Bacteriophages have recently become more of an investment for much of the western world, but they have been essential for a long stretch of time in Eastern Europe, mainly due to a lack of antibiotics. These viruses target specific bacteria and could take care of things like methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus (MRSA), and the only reason they discovered these miracle treatments was a lack of water sanitation. Yep, turns out sewage was leaking into their water supply and to everyone’s surprise, some people started to get better because of it. Lot of bacteria for those bacteriophage to replicate inside of and lyse in sewage. Wouldn’t recommend trying that yourself.
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Votes:
iamanabanana (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (2/5): Mharman, Savant
WyIted (1/5): Pie
There are some absolutely gigantic viruses out there, some large enough to rival small bacteria cells. These include Mimiviruses and Pandoraviruses. They tend to infect more complex single cellular life like amoeba and algae, and they do it by basically injecting them with a host of viral machinery that hijacks the cell, rather than slowly building new machinery inside a cell like other viruses. And here’s the crazy part: they can be directly infected by other viruses. Virophages are found inside of these virus particles.
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@Mikal
@whiteflame - if I get to L1 , please just replace me
Understood.
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Votes:
iamanabanana (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (2/5): Savant, Pie
Winogradsky columns are pretty interesting ways to generate some very complex bacterial communities. Basically, you stuff pond mud into a large glass column with some sulfur (we used calcium sulfate), seal it up, and then let the bacteria do their work. You'll see an interesting array of colors as various sulfur-utilizing bacteria thrive in that environment, particularly purples and greens. They're easy enough to isolate from there, particularly if you have ports in the side the draw from. No two Winogradsky columns look alike.
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Votes:
iamanabanana (1/5): WyIted
Mikal (3/5): Mharman, Savant, Pie
I've already talked about Gram stains, but there are a lot of different ways to do staining, all of which make use of different elements in or around the cell wall. There is an acid-fast stain, which can identify organisms with waxy cell walls. There's an endospore stain using malachite green that will stain individual spores both within and outside of a cell. There are flagellar stains that allow you to see the whip-like appendages that allow cells to become motile. And there is a capsule stain, which is actually a negative stain where you don't stain the bacteria at all but instead stain the background, making the capsules around cells visible by contrast. There are even some mixtures of stains that allow you to tell if a cell is alive, dying or necrotic based on which stain they pick up.
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@ILikePie5
@Savant
@WyIted
Good point. The votes will stand right now, I'll tag those with votes on her atm.
Votes:
iamanabanana (2/5): Pie, WyIted
Mikal (2/5): Mharman, Savant
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Update: Given AR still hasn't gotten back to me at all and we're almost 12 hours in, I'm going ahead with a switch up. iamanabanana will be taking his place in this game. I've updated the OP to reflect that.
Votes:
AdaptableRatman (2/5): Pie, WyIted
Mikal (2/5): Mharman, Savant
Going to start doing a series on methods of isolating or enriching for certain organisms. There's an organism called Caulobacter which can survive in extremely low nutrient environments by just anchoring itself with an extension called a holdfast. They're often found in standing or running water, so we always used to just take a sample from one of our water baths that had been sitting for a while to find them. They don't grow fast, but are they ever hardy.
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@Casey_Risk
I see you aren't a believer in the two-domain classification system, then.
Heard of it. I think the three domain classification system has more support behind it.
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Votes:
AdaptableRatman (2/5): Pie, WyIted
Mikal (1/5): Mharman
If you took high school biology, you probably know some version of the acronym for taxonomic ranks (i.e. the way we classify and thus relate different organisms): KPCOFGS (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). We all learned some way to remember that order, but you probably don't know that Kingdom isn't the top of that pile anymore. There's a step above it called Domain, and the interesting thing is that there are two whole domains for Prokaryotes (single celled organisms without a nucleus) - Bacteria and Archaea - and just one domain for everything else - Eukarya. Archaea contains a lot of interesting microbes called extremophiles that can survive and thrive in extreme environments, e.g. those undersea boiling hot vents and some even live in the Dead Sea.
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AdaptableRatman (2/5): Pie, WyIted
Earth (1/5): Mharman
Bacteria form biofilms on surfaces that basically function as a community of microbes built to protect themselves and improve their growth. Many of these biofilms are virtually essential for life to exist and thrive as it does, e.g. rhizobacteria which promote the growth of plants, but in a medical setting, they're often the cause of some terrible infections and are extremely difficult to eliminate, even from surfaces that should be clean like catheters.
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AdaptableRatman (1/5): Pie
Earth (1/5): Mharman
Fun fact: Gram stains were developed back in 1884 and are mainly used to differentiate bacteria based on the presence of peptidoglycan in the bacterial cell wall. Using two stains (crystal violet and safranin) plus a few other chemicals, you can get some pretty decent pictures of your organism under the microscope. Crystal violet is a pain to get out of your clothes, though... learned that one the hard way.
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Earth (1/5): Mharman
Fun fact: Bloodborne infections usually don't get very high in concentration, which makes them difficult to detect before they cause sepsis and kill you. There are two exceptions: Yersinia pestis (Black Plague) and Bacillus anthrasis (Anthrax), both of which will achieve numbers large enough to be easily seen under a microscope before they kill you.
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@Mharman
Mikal and RM were last seen 6 and 4 days ago respectively. I’ll assume Mikal will show up eventually but I’m not sure if RM will given recent events (and the whole “maybe mafia is evil” thing during said recent event).Tagging you since you may need to tag Banana in for a replace if we get a no-show.
Yeah, I've reached out to Banana as a potential backup. I've managed to contact Mikal, so he shouldn't be a concern. AR/RM is trickier since he's blocked me on Discord.
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