Viral Vector: Biochemistry Arcade

Infected cells act as decoys for the antibodies, which gives you a moment to breathe. Infect enough of them and a boss cell appears; to get past it, answer a biochemistry question correctly.

The science

• You are a virus. Viruses can’t copy themselves on their own: they enter a host cell and use its machinery to make new virus particles (viral replication).
• The shell. A virus wraps its genome in a protein shell, the capsid, often built from many copies of one protein. With Jade Forwood’s group we solved the capsid of beak and feather disease virus, which kills parrots and cockatoos: 60 copies of one protein, arranged as twelve rings of five.
• The antibodies. Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins made by B cells. They bind to a virus and can stop it entering cells.
• The quiz covers enzymes (lock and key and induced fit, pepsin, amylase), haemoglobin, rhodopsin, the Bcl-2 family and apoptosis, kinesin, the nuclear localisation signal, the electron transport chain and ATP synthase. I helped with a crystal structure of part of ATP synthase: see F1-ATPase.

Where the game cuts corners

• Viruses can’t steer or swim: they drift with whatever fluid they’re in until they bump into a cell with the right receptor on its surface.
• Infected cells don’t act as decoys. In life, they’re found and destroyed by cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells; in the game, the antibodies chase them instead.
• There are no boss cells, and as far as anyone knows, no virus has ever answered a biochemistry question.