October 15, 2006

The Inner Life of a Cell. An 8-minute Flash production that may be the most eerily beautiful thing you see today. And just try not to laugh at the motor protein shuffling along in fuzzy slippers.
posted by fish tick 18 years ago
  • (shuffles along in kinesin/dynein slippers)
  • good find, tickie!
  • absolutely beautiful - I love the way self organization is depicted. Any idea where we can see the full 8 minute animation? (the flash animation is only a couple minutes long)
  • I love the little walking stick-like dude dragging the big globby thing up the ramp-like thing.
  • You eggheads and your sciency-science mumbo-jumbo! Try to dumb it down for the rest of us slobs, nunia!
  • Sorry, Koko; I just assume that everyone else had Globology in high school. My bad.
  • The only thing I can't wrap my head around is the sense of space in this video. The objects are drawn to scale, but they're placed in a disproportionately large environment. My limited (but hopefully improving) understanding of biochemistry is that so much is possible in cells because things are really crowded and close together -- certain molecular interactions wouldn't be possible otherwise. They cop to that in the linked article, though. And it's still pretty. Between this and polychrome's excellent post, quite a good day for neato cell bio stuff!
  • Any idea where we can see the full 8 minute animation? Huh- I thought it was 8 minutes! Must've been on comics time, there. And on searching for the full version, I see also that this thing has been all over the place! Here I thought I had found something so stunningly original - tch!
  • pretty good discussion over here.
  • Nice Postie, Fish. Here is a play-by-play explanation of what you're seeing in the animation. .... Then the coolest bit of the video - a microtubule motor protein pulls a vesicle to its destination in the cell. The cellular motor proteins really do look like this - their mechanism of action is basically a walk forwards.
  • Thanks for the link, StoryBored. I enjoy the animation much more now that I understand what it is I'm seeing.
  • That little motor protein dude needs some little pants, tho.
  • Joedan, u're welcome! That little motor protein dude needs some little pants, tho. I averted my eyes during that part.
  • Brilliant. Even though I spend my days working with computers (and the animations really are pretty amazing) I am intensely intrigued by biosciences and the workings of complex human microscience.