4 ms·

> I have a pretty nice picture in my head of vibrating proteins and the chaos it is down there (Movies such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0N

> I have a pretty nice picture in my head of vibrating proteins and the chaos it is down there (Movies such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-UY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-UY are extremely misleading!) That's really interesting, actually. In what ways are they misleading? Just... things not shaking around enough? How about this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmeDPqYUMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmeDPqYUMI ?

teekert 12y ago
That one looks closer to reality because the molecular movement is realistic for the (extremely short) time scale. However the system is simplified almost beyond recognition. The movie I posted suggests a nice roomy cytoplasm while in reality it is an extremely crowded soup of insanely fast vibrating molecules. Some (many?) proteins do not even have a solid structure or attain it only when they bind something. It also suggests molecules are attracted towards each other when in fact then rely almost completely on things like concentration and Brownian motion for the interaction dynamics. The movie does give a nice overview of processes but it is important to realize it is not the way it looks (as far as you can speak of "looking" at the molecular scale where photons interact with matter not in a way we "see" it normally, I mean, a protein is not a set of spheres, a carbon ring can absorb a photon or not, it can not bounce it back to reveal to your eye what it looks like.) So we are dealing with models here. Models of a reality we can not really imagine. Like Quantum Mechanics.
- undersuit 12y ago
  >extremely crowded soup >realize it is not the way it looks Can you blame them? I mean adding even just the free water molecules to the first video would result in two color static music video.

4 ms·

> I have a pretty nice picture in my head of vibrating proteins and the chaos it is down there (Movies such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0N

by Strilanc 12y ago

teekert 12y ago
That one looks closer to reality because the molecular movement is realistic for the (extremely short) time scale. However the system is simplified almost beyond recognition. The movie I posted suggests a nice roomy cytoplasm while in reality it is an extremely crowded soup of insanely fast vibrating molecules. Some (many?) proteins do not even have a solid structure or attain it only when they bind something. It also suggests molecules are attracted towards each other when in fact then rely almost completely on things like concentration and Brownian motion for the interaction dynamics. The movie does give a nice overview of processes but it is important to realize it is not the way it looks (as far as you can speak of "looking" at the molecular scale where photons interact with matter not in a way we "see" it normally, I mean, a protein is not a set of spheres, a carbon ring can absorb a photon or not, it can not bounce it back to reveal to your eye what it looks like.) So we are dealing with models here. Models of a reality we can not really imagine. Like Quantum Mechanics.
- undersuit 12y ago
  >extremely crowded soup >realize it is not the way it looks Can you blame them? I mean adding even just the free water molecules to the first video would result in two color static music video.