Member Interviews: PooPooBlast

[PooPooBlast]

3 hours ago, dermarx said:

 

Well two questions I have in mind now:

- If you could change something with the Yakuza-series what would it be? ('nothing' doesn't count as answer )

- If you could develop one of those games, which one would it be: Mirrors Edge 3, Yakuza 7 or a Yakuza Spin off?

 

 

Change huh? Hmmmmmm.... I'd probably remove a few minigames! Namely shogi and kick it out of existence! It's very annoying to play given that I'm so hardwired to play chess and shogi has a couple of differences which easily throws you off! 

 

Other than that, I've almost no other suggestions tbh or at least not at the top of my head at the moment.

 

To answer your second question, definitely Mirror's edge 3! Reason being is that Yakuza 7 is more or less confirmed to be in development which will star ichiban as the protagonist. As for Yakuza spin-offs, we already have a good amount of those while Mirror's edge only has two games so far! 

 

Not to mention it'll probably be another 6 or more years before we see another Mirror's edge (or maybe never... :/ ) because it's such a niche game and it is not quite the money maker which makes it hard to see the light of day when EA is in charge of publishing it... 

[Bumperklever]

22 hours ago, PooPooBlast said:

Ooh thanks for the info! Looked it up. I had to brush up on my organic chemistry skills to remember some of the types of protective groups that you use when dealing with carbonyls in your reaction. And are you a scientist by any chance? 

 

eh, I guess I wouldn't call myself really a scientist anymore, with me working in a more business oriented area. But I did graduate from university in chemistry, so I do have my fair share of lab experiences, like SPP synthesis and much more.

[Potent_Delusions]

I too majored in Biology (biomedical sciences to be exact, but it seems similar to the field you're in) and I never thought i'd see ubiquitin ligases mentioned on this website!

My interests were more on the microbiology side of things though, particularly how some species of bacteria had evolved to invade human macrophages due to their morphological similiarities to amoeba, which they'd been invading for millions of years prior to humans. The HIV virus is also good reading, it's amazing how such a small thing has evolved to avoid detection/destruction by our immune system so well. 

 

Also, Barracuda by Heart is a fantastic song. GTA San Andreas has such a good soundtrack. 

[Folkenio]

 

On 21/8/2019 at 10:07 AM, Dragon-Archon said:

Pleasure to meet you!! Awesome username, btw! Have you found information from your field of study being misinterpreted in videogames? If so, how?

Pleasure to meet you too! Mm interesting question! And sorry if this will bore you but I found it interesting to think about so too bad 

 

Actually just very recently while playing judgement I’ve met something that’s a little misleading. They were talking about Alzheimer’s disease and how it’s caused by a build-up of beta-amyloid tangles of proteins which takes up physical space in the brain and causes many complications such as making it to difficult to rid of waste from the cells and also how it impairs memory both of which are accurate so far. Those proteins are literally a physical barrier more or less because these proteins are made of beta sheets which are the most stable type of protein secondary structure so they won’t go away easily and they can even form aggregates which is the dangerous part.

 

In the real world, we haven’t been able to cure this disease. In the game they did supposedly and the way they did it is by finding a way to induce autophagy (auto for self, phagy for eating so it means “self-eating”) in the cells bearing those beta-amyloid proteins. Autophagy is normally done by the cell to rid of dysfunctional components, molecules and organelles to maintain homeostasis or balance within the cell. They said that after autophagy of those beta-amyloid proteins or their removal by the cells, the brain cells can slowly rebuild itself and essentially you’re cured. Fantastic right?! Why didn’t we think of that right???! . Well it’s not that simple… it never is. 

 

There are lots of problems with this. Firstly, autophagy is very specific in a cell. While it could theoretically be possible to have a drug that marks those proteins for autophagy somehow, it has to be oddly specific to not make the drug discriminate with other normal cell components so you run the risk of damaging normal proteins. Think of it like chemotherapy. You destroy cancer cells with those drugs, but you’re also destroying other normal cells in the process.

 

Part of what makes Alzheimer’s brutal is that as mentioned, those beta-amyloid proteins have a high beta sheets content which are very stable and hard to degrade. They can even form aggregates as well and even convert some of the normal proteins to misfolded beta amyloid proteins which makes it even harder to break down given their size and constant regeneration by transforming normal proteins so I doubt that autophagy is enough actually destroy those aggregates permanently. In the most common type of autophagy, the cell sends lysosomes which are sac-like and contain lots of hydrolytic enzymes that fuses with the target macromolecule (beta-amyloid protein in this case) to break it down but the problem is that lysosomes could be too small to actually fuse with those protein aggregates! And even then, suppose you destroy the aggregates, an adult brain has limited regeneration capabilities so you probably might not be able to go back to your previous form so you can’t be 100% cured should this autophagy method work!

 

Finally, Alzheimer’s disease is not as simple as having a build up of beta-amyloid proteins. There are actually multiple hypothesises on how Alzheimer’s develops and the build up of this protein is only one hypothesis out of many other equally valid ones! For instance you can get hyperphosphorylation (the addition of extra phosphate groups added) on a type of protein called tau protein which is used to stabilize microtubules in nerve cells! Microtubules are essentially “train tracks” where cell cargo can be moved around in the cell from one place to another and it also provides a structural frame/ support for the cell.

So overall, having one drug that could induce autophagy to destroy the beta-amyloid proteins, should it work of course, will not necessarily work for the tau protein hypothesis and it will not necessarily work for other hypotheses out there!

 

Wow sorry I got carried away answering this .

 

Man, what an awesome interview and interviewee!!! Thanks for answering my question, @PooPooBlast!! It's actually cool to learn more about this kind of stuff, so don't apologize. Keep on rockin', my dude!!

[PooPooBlast]

5 hours ago, Bumperklever said:

 

eh, I guess I wouldn't call myself really a scientist anymore, with me working in a more business oriented area. But I did graduate from university in chemistry, so I do have my fair share of lab experiences, like SPP synthesis and much more.

That's still awesome! I initially wanted to enrol into the biochemistry program but I settled with molecular biology so while I'm decent with chemistry, I'm not as proficient as I want to be. So for that im going to choose some chemistry courses as my electives.

 

3 hours ago, Potent_Delusions said:

I too majored in Biology (biomedical sciences to be exact, but it seems similar to the field you're in) and I never thought i'd see ubiquitin ligases mentioned on this website!

My interests were more on the microbiology side of things though, particularly how some species of bacteria had evolved to invade human macrophages due to their morphological similiarities to amoeba, which they'd been invading for millions of years prior to humans. The HIV virus is also good reading, it's amazing how such a small thing has evolved to avoid detection/destruction by our immune system so well. 

 

Also, Barracuda by Heart is a fantastic song. GTA San Andreas has such a good soundtrack. 

Haha I also never thought I'd be mentioning ubiquitin ligases and microtubules on a gaming website but here we are. And actually I've an upcoming course literally called microbiology which has a practical component so I'm looking forward to that. 

 

And indeed, that song kicks ass! I still remember it plays on the KDST channel and for some reason it likes to play when you're driving an airplane. 

 

3 hours ago, Folkenio said:

 

 

Man, what an awesome interview and interviewee!!! Thanks for answering my question, @PooPooBlast!! It's actually cool to learn more about this kind of stuff, so don't apologize. Keep on rockin', my dude!!

Thank you very much and thank you for asking the question . Haha I got carried away when answering that question and it forced me to put my thinking hat on. 

Edited August 23, 2019 by PooPooBlast

[Lava_Yuki]

Excellent interview! Good luck with your career, it's great to be able to balance both trophy hunting and career

[Maxximum]

Finally got some spare time to sit and read this interview, and I have to say it was a great read with some background music from the OSTs as provided in the interview.  

I'm quite impressed with the origination of infamous username of yours too . I should also tip my hat to your knowledge and sparked interest in biology. I know a lot of people as well who aren't largely invested into movies and TV shows. This interview just had me insert some cool info I could look forward to considering. 

 

Fun read like I said. Another amazing episode in this Member Interviews series, thanks Dragon. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by ee28max