Powering the Cell, Mitochondria - stunning new animation(biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu)

9 pointsby hfinney16 ปีที่แล้ว3 comments

biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu

Powering the Cell, Mitochondria - stunning new animation

http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/

3 comments

hfinney16 ปีที่แล้ว

Here is possibly a better link:

http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_mitochondria.html

This is a sequel to the Inner Life of a Cell animation that came out a few years ago. It shows what happens inside the mitochondria, which supply power to the cell.

A brief explanation:

We see a snake-like molecule go through a couple of holes. This is an unfolded protein molecule and demonstrates that mitochondria mostly don't make their own proteins, they have to be imported. Mitochondria have an inner and an outer membrane so it has to go through two layers.

We follow it through the inner membrane and see the glory of the mitochondrial interior. We zoom past (and through) a bunch of proteins that are involved in oxidizing fuel molecules. There's a double helix DNA in the corner to remind us that mitochondria do synthesize some of their own proteins.

We next zoom in on a piece of the inner membrane. studded with protein complexes and surrounded by glowing molecules. Note that some of the proteins have their bottom part spinning - these are ATP synthase, one of the most amazing of proteins.

[Out of time now, will write more later...]

jared31416 ปีที่แล้ว

Direct Link (because the video did not work for me on the website):

http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/Video/Mitochondria_480p.mo...

erikpukinskis16 ปีที่แล้ว

This would be insanely more useful if they would just put a few captions in. It's really inspiring to look at, but how do I find out more? Search Google for "the cool molecule in the harvard mitochondria animation that changes the three bump blue thingies into the four bump glowing thingies"??