Around Again Cell Cycle Game

The cell cycle is often learned as a list of phases, hiding what each must finish and what checkpoints are for. You play a cyclin-dependent kinase whose bike is its cyclin, and phosphorylation stands in for each step the cell completes. In G1 the cell makes more organelles, and in S phase each chromosome becomes two sister chromatids. After the centrosome is copied, mitosis condenses the chromosomes, lines them up at the equator and pulls their sister chromatids to opposite poles before cytokinesis splits the cell. Checkpoints report what they find, and pushing past one stands for a cell ignoring its controls. Inherited errors build up with each division and can bring an apoptosis signal, and a cell that keeps ignoring its checkpoints can lose control of its cycle.