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The Inner Life of the Cell Animation

XVIVO Scientific Animation · 4.8M views · 2011-07-11 · 3:13

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Overview

An award-winning 3D animation by XVIVO for Harvard's BioVisions showing the molecular machinery inside a cell as a white blood cell responds to a stimulus.

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Recommended as a jaw-dropping view of the complexity and machine-like nature of cells.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2017–2024

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What people said

dopylitty · 2022-02 · Strong recommendation

Motor proteins are so incredibly cool. Like many others I was blown away by the 3D animated Inner Life of the Cell[1] showing these proteins physically walking around in the cell. Previously I had this idea that cells were just blobs of jelly and somehow they interacted with each-other to produce macro phenomena like muscle movement. And then you get into the other protein machines like the ATP synthase in the mitochondria [2] (also linked below) which are actually little motors/pumps. And we all have billions of these inside use spinning away. It's just amazing. 1. [VIDEO] 2. [LINK]

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rstuart4133 · 2020-06 · Strong recommendation

This video blew me away: [VIDEO] It's an animation of the bio-chemistry a lymphocyte uses to move between cells (maybe - that's a guess?). It covers what I can only assume is a few milliseconds, it's just a tiny slither of the cells behaviours, yet how much is going on to make that happen is off the charts. I showed in it a club consisting of mostly software engineers, and the universal reaction was "thank god I didn't do bio-chemistry".

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ccvannorman · 2019-10 · Strong recommendation

* 'Small proteins also promise to revise the current understanding of the genome. Many appear to be encoded in stretches of DNA—and RNA—that were not thought to help build proteins of any sort. Some researchers speculate that the short stretches of DNA could be newborn genes, on their way to evolving into larger genes that make full-size proteins. Thanks in part to small proteins, "We need to rethink what genes are," says microbiologist and molecular biologist Gisela Storz of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.' Wow. Amazing how incredible biology and proteins are and their still-barely-understood mechanisms. For anyone who hasn't already seen it, I highly recommend The Inner Life of a Cell [0] [0] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by XVIVO Scientific Animation, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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