Paramecium video games | Science | guardian.co.uk

Paramecia are single-celled animals shaped like a grain of rice. They are covered with a short fuzz, known as cilia, which rapidly beat like millions of oars on a boat. Paramecia move very quickly and are common inhabitants of pondwater, aggressively preying on anything that fits into their mouth, such as bacteria and other small cells. Besides being an interesting classroom introduction to the microscopic world, paramecia are also helping people learn more about universal biological processes.

In a clever juxtaposition of biology and technology, Stanford physcist, Ingmar Riedel-Kruse and his team are creating paramecia-based versions of classic video games that you can play by controlling the movements of these organisms. One such game, PAC-mecium, is a paramecia-based version of the classic video game, Pacman. In this game, players cause the rapidly-moving organisms to change directions by changing the polarity of an electrical field in a fluid chamber filled with paramecia.

The movements of the paramecia are recorded by a camera in real-time and those images are superimposed onto a game board by the computer. In this game, the player's goals are to control paramecia movements so they "eat" virtual yeast cells whilst avoiding being eaten themselves by Pacman-like fish. A microprocessor tracks the movement of the organisms to keep score. The video describes this and several other video games.