MetaboSim - the fun and intuitive way to learn metabolism!

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  Dynamic metabolism: adjustable oxygen levels show how cell metabolism changes.

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  Dynamic metabolism: 0 % oxygen shift metabolism to fermentation.

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  ATP tracker: tracking of ATP output depending on oxygen levels and terminal electron acceptors.

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  Cellular locations: illustrates in which cell compartments metabolic pathways occur.

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  Glycolysis deep dive: explore glycolysis in more detail.

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  TCA cycle deep dive: explore the TCA cycle in more detail.

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  ETC deep dive: explore the miracles of the electron transport chain!

Inspiration

Me and my colleague teach microbiology for freshmen and sophomores at Weber State University. Consistently, microbial metabolism is the hardest topic for students to understand. We have been looking for an app or website that models metabolism to use as an aid in understanding key metabolism concepts. We have not been able to find one, so we built our own!

What it does

This app allows students to, either on their own or by using a Socratic tutorial, explore, tinker with and learn the key concepts of microbial metabolism. The level of complexity is meant to be appropriate for freshmen and sophomore students, just starting to dip their toes in microbial physiology.

How we built it

App is built using Base44.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenges were to get the correct level of detail and accurately describe what we wanted to accomplish. Correct animations also took time to model.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The ability to accurately adjust the level of oxygen and adding alternative terminal electron acceptors is pretty sweet! The Socratic tutorial works really great and allows students to answer questions using their own language.

What we learned

A great way of telling the program what you want, is to make a hand drawn sketch, take a picture of it and upload it to the program. It does a great job a turning the sketch into an animated tutorial!

What's next for MetaboSim - the fun and intuitive way to learn metabolism!

Adding an option for more complexity and alternative energy sources, such as lipids and amino acids. Right now, the app is limited to glucose as an energy source.

Built With

• base44