When I posted the XVIVO medical animation yesterday, an anonymous comment alerted me that even more elaborate productions by this group are available. "The Inner Life of a Cell" was uploaded to YouTube by Harvard Magazine.
I find the animation to be stunning. There's also one brief almost-laugh-out-loud segment, at 3:46, when a motor protein pulls a vesicle along a microtubule.
This video certainly clears up a lot of stuff for me.
ReplyDeleteLife is truly an amazing complexity. Watching this video makes one realize just how complex an individual cell really is. An intricate dance and interrelationship: it is like a whole city in perfect operation. And there trillions of cells like this in our body.
ReplyDeleteI think about it, and it wasn't that long ago that cells were seen as not much more than a very basic protoplasm.. so basic in fact, that an entire cell could spontaneously organize and operate with just the right chemicals and a bit of spark.
Even the simplest form of life known to man, the prokaryotic cell is mind-numbingly complex with its tough, flexible membrane equipped with protein doors that only allow certain types of molecules in and out and the cell's ability to create thousands of proteins per minute from 20 or so different amino acids...
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the best thing about this video is that it's (almost) real.
ReplyDeleteA designer of a video game or a movie couldn't think of something more interesting. And we have all of this beauty an complexity inside of us. Isn't that great? :)