The Inner Life of the Cell

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sage
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That animation is relaly cool. I haven;t read the article yet. The fact that all the proteins and what not are moving as if they are intelligent doesn't seem like it could be real to me. I think it sounds more real that all the things are just floating around and happen upon their "taxi" by chance. Like a reaction only happens when they meet the other part of the equations, but they don't actyually seek out that other part. They just sort of stumble upon it.

But maybe they do seek out what they're looking for, I don't know. It's still a great show of animation.
 
Lukocyte extravagation, eh? I did that with my girlfriend last night.

I'm sure it'll be a while until we can actually see what's going on inside a cell, and this is probably the best interpretation around, but I just can't get over how goofy some parts are. Those leggy things! They walk just like us! Like they have a brain or something. But I'll take the scientists' word for it.
 
The way those things move around with such automation and seeming sense of purpose is just incredible. Like Keef said, it's like they are aware what what they have to do.

Are they? It could be. There are forces at work there that we will likely never be capable of comprehending.
 
Well... consider... Ants and other insects do things that seem intelligent using very little actual brain power, so it's not far-fetched that, given that all the structures here are on the molecular equivalent of train-tracks, that they might seem purposefully motile.

And note, the volume between structures is exaggerated, so those little proteins aren't really flying through vast reaches of empty plasm to find each other... they're often right beside each other.

Awesome animation! Nice post, Sage!
 
In addition to what niky just said, I'd add that some of these structures appear to 'behave' as if they are aware of what they are doing, but that there is a difference between having a purpose and being of aware of having a purpose. The behaviour of everything in the cell is governed by their chemical and physical properties, and the usefulness of any given biomolecule or structure is refined and retained by the process of natural selection. However amazing they may be, it's perfectly feasible to explain how these things came to be the way they are if we take into account the vast length of time involved in their creation. Some chemical reactions - such as electron transfer reactions in photosynthesis - happen on such a fast time scale that these reactions can happen more times in one second than the total number of seconds the average human being will live. In other words, one second on a human time scale is very short, but on the atomic/molecular time scale it can be extremely long (equivalent to a 'human lifetime'). Now couple that with the fact that the Earth is 4 billion years old, and you've got yourself a truly massive timescale over which these things can evolve...
 
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