MarsnutBack to Home ↗

THE PROTEIN HOMEOSTASIS LAB

ER Stress
Manager

Reduce demand. Support folding. Know when disposal matters.

For the curious at heart. A pocket-sized collection of science-inspired games.
Made for a quick break, a little discovery, and one more round.

DESKTOP / TABLET / MOBILE
Your browser is your playground.

One evolving ER stress episode

First observe normal turnover. At 20 seconds the incoming load increases. At 60 seconds a persistently misfolding cohort appears. At 90 seconds the external pulse ends.

Reduce reporter input during overload. Support recoverable folding and disposal of eligible persistent cargo. Reassess burden before restoring normal production. Endogenous sensors remain active. Select temporary PERK, IRE1 or ATF6 focus through authored branch-selective experimental activation. Folding support cannot rescue every substrate.

Brief load surges arrive at 35 and 70 seconds, with five-second warnings. Coordinate the response and release unnecessary activation during recovery.

The 120 seconds and all numerical traces are teaching abstractions, not biological times or measured thresholds. The final apoptosis investigation uses separate populations, regardless of your score.

How to play · clock paused

  1. Use the production selector to change reporter input. Reduced input does not eliminate every cellular translation process.
  2. Use folding and ERAD support separately. The progress bars show gradual development of the authored capacity increase.
  3. Observe backlog, persistent burden, throughput and pathway outputs separately. Review the notebook without losing active time.
  4. After 120 seconds, interpret a matched control pair and four explained questions. Select multiple observations supporting apoptosis in the separate population.

Keyboard: Tab, arrows and Enter use all controls; P toggles pause outside inputs and dialogs. Keys 1, 2, 3 select PERK, IRE1 or ATF6 focus; 0 releases it. Mouse and touch act immediately. Hidden tabs pause; explicitly resume when returning. Help, mechanisms and notebook pause both simulation and audio.

Knowledge: 25 live strategy + 25 matched comparison + 25 mechanisms + 25 inference limits. No speed or maximum-signal bonus. Study continuation preserves the original 120-second report.

Mechanisms, glossary & sources

Detailed calcium/redox perturbations, ER-phagy, RIDD and disease-specific pathways are outside this first version. UPR sensor activation is simplified, not a universal BiP-release switch. This game is not a disease or treatment model. Independent subject-expert review is pending.

Evidence notebook · clock paused