7 ms·
A video of the transformation of a single cell into a salamander
- Kostic 3y agoTruly magnificent.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoBiology is the most advanced technology.
- layer8 3y agoIt’s a maintenance nightmare though.
- doublerabbit 3y agoTell me about it. 34 and already encountering mechanical failures. Hurt my jaw while brushing my teeth.
- dylan604 3y agoglad i don't have to be a part of the code review
- imbnwa 3y agoNot even brainfuck comes close
- calderwoodra 3y agoVery cool - I always thought salamanders were reptiles, but I guess they're actually amphibians!
- xaei 3y agoI believe this is an alpine newt, not a salamander (according to the end credits)
- jacquesm 3y agoBut a Newt is a Salamander (but not all Salamanders are Newts).
- xaei 3y agoAh thank you. I spoke much too quickly. Order Urodela (etymology: conspicuous or evident tail).
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's very tricky because the way to distinguish them is to call the other ones in the same larger group 'true Salamanders' which already indicates that there was some historical confusion around naming these. The tree of life has been re-arranged many times already and as more genomes are sequenced we discover more and more non-obvious mistakes. For instance 'Comb jellyfish' have caused a major stir amongst evolutionary biologists. It's interesting how we needed taxonomy to figure out that there is such a thing as a tree of life and the basis for genomics and then, once we had that we had to go back and do (multiple) fairly major revisions to fix stuff that turned out to be wrong. The interesting thing is that the overall picture is still subject to such major changes.
- sitzkrieg 3y agoreally cool video! sharing it on ios is proving hard because even the preview goes full screen preventing copying the url, lol. if anyone else hits this, turn on airplane mode then you can successfully long press to copy/share
- ornornor 3y agoOn Firefox iOS, it does fullscreen when long pressing the title, but then I can touch X and it goes back to how other links show up when long pressing. And then you can copy the url.
- layer8 3y agoJust copy the submitted URL? https://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/1442844739770_1550184269599_1442865731523_mp4_video_1024x576_1632000_primary_audio_eng_3.mp4 https://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/14428...
- jacquesm 3y agoBreathtaking... wow. I found myself trying to guess what bit would become what and it never really worked, just endless transformation and re-absorption until poof: salamander. Nature will never cease to amaze me.
- haswell 3y agoThere’s something about seeing videos like this that breaks my brain. Science has learned so much about biology, but whatever knowledge I’ve gained is dwarfed by the sheer awe and wonder I feel when trying to contemplate what it is that I just saw here. The forces of nature converging to bring forth life from the energy released by the Big Bang billions of years ago. It boggles the mind - this mind that is somehow conscious of itself and which came into existence by an even more mind bendingly complex process. Being alive is unspeakably amazing.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoFrom cosmological dust to life! Why does it happen? Universe would be a lot simpler without it.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoNatural selection! If you're like me, you probably understand the basics of evolution by natural selection, but it still seems to improbable/outlandish that such complex structures could be created just by natural selection, even with billions of years of time. I highly recommend Steven Pinker's book "How the Mind Works" as it has a great section on how natural selection works (and how it can be confusing even to many scientists), and how it can create complex structures (like the eye) generation-by-generation. I think it helped me understand natural selection as less of a biological "force" than as more of a mathematical outcome due to the statistics of non-perfect replicators.
- xeonmc 3y agoI think that only answers the question of how it happens. The question of why it happens falls in the realm of metaphysics/philosophy.
- ekianjo 3y ago> but it still seems to improbable/outlandish that such complex structures could be created just by natural selection, even with billions of years of time. probably thats why Life is not abundant in the universe, as far as we can see even in the Solar system.
- praptak 3y ago"Principles of Development" Wolpert, Tickle, Arias is a good book if you want to (begin to) understand what we know about this kind of biological self-assembly.
- agumonkey 3y agoThanks. Since seeing M. Levin's planaria's videos I'm on a quest to learn this topic (and usual developmental biology)
- michaelsbradley 3y agoIs the single cell the same organism as the salamander? Is the acorn that drops on the ground and grows in the soil the same organism as the oak tree into which it develops, living for hundreds of years?
- rolph 3y agoputative organism.
- wheelerof4te 3y agoThey have the same DNA, that's for sure.
- imbnwa 3y agoAccording to Aristotle and Hegel, yes
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoReally cool video and I appreciate the deft editing hand on the different zooms and perspectives so we could see the most interesting details. My only critique would be that the sounds (especially the water slosh sounds) were a little distracting. The heartbeat was cool to indicate when the pulsing emerged and I guess the underwater sound was trying to set an atmosphere, but mostly I would have preferred to simply appreciate the video for what it was. Props to the maker regardless!
- hnbear 3y agoShould have [2019], I think. Been around a bit. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/time-lapse-film-shows-salamander-development https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/time-laps... Amazing video still.
- Hugsun 3y agoAh, forgot about that. I don't see a way to fix it :/
- kodisha 3y agoYou have a single cell that keeps dividing, and dividing, and in each division it becomes slightly different, and at the end some end up being the hart, some is the leg muscle, some are brain, and some are eye nerve. Incredible, almost DIVINE.. The terraforming script behind this mechanism, is one of the most complex and most beautiful mechanism that exists in this universe.
- sfn42 3y agoCells in different locations produce different chemical markers. These markers spread out through the tissue and create a sort of gradient. By observing the gradient, a cell can know where it is (or at least what it's supposed to do). At least that's the explanation as I've understood it.
- YeBanKo 3y agoAmazing video. Is it a single cell through at the beginning?
- cryptoegorophy 3y agoNot just this but if you look at the journey to microcosmos YouTube channel it has awesome videos of microorganisms that are single cell and you start to wonder what is life. How can one single cell know what to do, there is no cpu or logic with “if” and “then”
- arghwhat 3y agoThere are it's and then's: cells and their organelles are for all intents and purposes molecular machines. Some proteins might act as a sensor, binding to some other protein when triggered, in turn causing some action to occur.
- lurquer 3y agoThen make a simulation on a computer of a single cell dividing and assembling into a form. Good luck. Hand-wavey comments such as yours evidence a profound lack of appreciation for what such videos signify.
- bglazer 3y agoThe parent comment is just straightforwardly true though. Researchers have even quantified how many bits of information cellular sensory systems can encode. Just because cells are too complicated to fully simulate doesn’t mean they don’t have behavior that could be described as if/then logic https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1615660114 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1615660114
- SigmundA 3y agoMade me think of Cosmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUCS7l4-EU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUCS7l4-EU0
- anjel 3y agoAn amazing video, but too many Alien movies has ruined my brain and so I kept returning to the reflexive need to pull my face away a safe distance instead of amazing even more.
- soligern 3y agoDo we know how the different cells self organize, know where to form folds, parts and depressions and what the boundaries are?
- phito 3y agoMichael Levin is working on figuring that out, check out his work on bioelecteicity
- mjan22640 3y agoSome aspects they figured out: - the cells communicate and share the plan - each cell has the plan of the whole body - the plan is not stored in genes
- Daniel_sk 3y agoAs far as I understand it there are multiple levels to this. One of the mechanisms is that the cells don't necessarily know where to stop or where to fold - but as everything is being done in decentralised manner the cells reach boundaries of other structures and this will then "shape" the structure. It's an extremely efficient data compression where the instructions many times don't include specific measures or counts (e.g. of fingers) but are more about just timing or symmetry breaking. Imagine construction workers being told to just keep making a wall until they can't build anymore because they will hit another wall (and the other wall is being built with similar instructions). The limits can be spatial, chemical, probably bioelectric...
- sfn42 3y agoOne aspect I've learned about is what I wrote in a different comment: Cells in different locations produce different chemical markers. These markers spread out through the tissue and create a sort of gradient. By observing the gradient, a cell can know where it is (or at least what it's supposed to do). At least that's the explanation as I've understood it.
- lawrenceyan 3y agoIs this what the birth of AGI will feel like? I wonder.
- muslimman 3y ago[flagged]
- icemelt8 3y ago[flagged]