A beautiful teaching animation on the workings of a cell.
We explore the deep oceans and venture into outer space in order to satisfy our curiosity about the universe. Few of us, however, realize that there is another universe within, a world every bit as amazing as that without: the inner life of the cell.
XVIVO, an animation company in Connecticut, has produced an 8-minute piece for the Cell and Molecular Biology Department at Harvard University that is spectacular. The animation depicts the inner workings of a lymphocyte as it senses and responds to an external stimulus. Watch it below or better still in its high-resolution version here.
There’s a lot going on in this clip and those of you who are biology oriented may have noted the following (collated from a number of sites that featured the animation) events:
A lymphocyte is rolling along inside a blood vessel. We see the exterior of the cell and then zoom in to see the proteins in the membrane that are mediating the rolling by contacting other proteins on the surface of the substrate. We then go inside the cell and first have a tour of the various cellular components - mostly the elements of the cytoskeleton and proteins being moved around in the membrane on lipid rafts. We then, in just a beautiful sequence, see the assembly and disassembly of actin and then microtubules before watching a motor protein, most probably kinesin (From Wikipedia: Kinesin is a class of motor protein dimer found in biological cells. A kinesin attaches to microtubules, and moves along the tubule in order to transport cellular cargo, such as vesicles. Kinesins typically consist of two large globular heads that allow attachment to microtubules, a central coiled region, and a region termed light-chain, which connects the kinesin to the intracellular component to be moved. Most kinesin-related proteins move toward the plus end of the microtubule, as does kinesin itself, but some move toward the minus end.) lumbering along a microtubule bearing its enormous cargo (a vesicle) in what is surely one of the most awesome processes shown. In a further extended sequence we watch mRNA being processed into protein. It is ejected from the nucleus, processed and translated by ribosomes into the endoplasmic reticulum, the protein is transported to the Golgi apparatus, where it is further processed and then finally ejected into the cytosol where it carried to the membrane where its function will be to mediate the rolling of the lymphocyte.
Congratulations to lead animator John Liebler and his team for giving us a beautiful glimpse at the inner workings of a cell. I only wish I had access to something like that when I did my cell and molecular biology in medical school. Hope they produce more of these animations.
Joseph Froncioni
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