A microscopic drama
Posted by Nicholas Gruen on Monday, October 9, 2006
Get a load of this!
Curtesy of Brad DeLong’s site. Brad lets us know this.
After some viewing I think that this isn’t just a series of pretty pictures. This is a real story. What we’re watching is the innards of helper T-cell activation. The lymphocyte crawling along the arteriole wall at the beginning has picked up a foreign signal, and has latched onto a macrophage through the T-cell receptors and major histocompatibility receptors. Then we dive into the cell, and the majority of the video shows the synthesis, sorting, and delivery of T-cell receptors, cytokines, and other proteins, and we finish with the now-alerted and activated lymphocyte slipping in-between the capillary wall cells on its way to trouble.
Some people know an amazing amount. Anyway, please observe the drama – perhaps going on inside you as you watch. Fortunately Ken has created a category for this post – ‘life’.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 10:06 PM and filed under Life.
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Are you saying this the real deal… it’s not made up? It has obviously been speeded up.. But WOW!
Maybe ID is far fetched, but it looks like there is a serious amount of order and rule following going on. Makes me think Pascals wage is the better side of the bet, just in case.
Posted on 09-Oct-06 at 10:23 pm | PermalinkIt’s an animation – but otherwise the ‘real deal’ I guess.
Posted on 10-Oct-06 at 12:04 am | PermalinkIt represents a great way to teach children biology, methinks.
Posted on 10-Oct-06 at 10:00 am | PermalinkThe animation was created for Harvard’s Molecular & Cellular Biology program, to promote their classes.
here is a higher quality version which does it justice
Posted on 10-Oct-06 at 9:47 pm | Permalink