Animation of how HIV infects a single T-cell
Viruses are incredible. This video does a great job of illustrating how HIV in particular seems to hijack so many essential systems. I now feel like I have a deeper appreciation for why "cures" for viruses are like a holy grail technology – how could you even prevent something like this without collateral damage to some perfectly healthy + necessary process? They're so tangential to how our cells need to work that they're almost parallel.
Also wealthy individuals or companies funding research purely for public good, often with little to no prospect of returns.
Just from one eldritch hive-mind to another.
Listed in increasing order:
"Graham's Number" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg
"How Big is Graham's Number? (feat Ron Graham)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuigptwlVHo
"The Enormous TREE(3)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P6DWAwwViU
"TREE(3) (extra footage)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IihcNa9YAPk
"The Daddy of Big Numbers (Rayo's Number)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3l0fPHZja8
Yes.
Basically everything is bumping around until the desired reaction or configuration is obtained. The irrelevant proteins are generally not shown.
The length scales involved are extremely short so the chaotic soup works itself into configuration shockingly quickly.
There are also membranes, vesicles, and organelles (e.g. Golgi) that partition, package, and redistribute proteins so that they tend to be more concentrated where required.
Dare I say it? That sounds alot like what we do in the office most of the time.
It makes a lot more sense when described from this perspective:
>You may wonder how things get around inside cells if they are so crowded. It turns out that molecules move unimaginably quickly due to thermal motion. A small molecule such as glucose is cruising around a cell at about 250 miles per hour, while a large protein molecule is moving at 20 miles per hour. Note that these are actual speeds inside the cell, not scaled-up speeds. I'm not talking about driving through a crowded Times Square at 20 miles per hour; to scale this would be more like driving through Times Square at 20 million miles per hour!
>Because cells are so crowded, molecules can't get very far without colliding with something. In fact, a molecule will collide with something billions of times a second and bounce off in a different direction. Because of this, molecules are doing a random walk through the cell and diffusing all around. A small molecule can get from one side of a cell to the other in 1/5 of a second.
>As a result of all this random motion, a typical enzyme can collide with something to react with 500,000 times every second. Watching the video, you might wonder how the different pieces just happen to move to the right place. In reality, they are covering so much ground in the cell so fast that they will be in the "right place" very frequently just by chance.