As my workload allows, I plan on spending some time revisiting many of the subjects from The Inner Life of the Cell, and where better to start than with a new version of this guy.
The kinesin motor protein was a real scene stealer in Inner Life, although it wasn’t even in the original treatment for the short. The original plan was to omit the motor protein in the vesicle shots, but when I saw Graham Johnson’s animation of the way a Kinesin takes a step from April 2000 (below), I secretly went ahead and modeled one of my own, animated a walk cycle for it, and added it into the vesicle shot. After I showed it to Dr. Viel, it not only got into the animation, it got several more shots as well.
Now everyone’s got a kinesin in their animation, most recently, the sparkly star stuff ones seen in episode 2 of the new COSMOS.
But, my favorite kinesin animation has to be this one, by the Hoogenraad lab at the Utrecht University, and not just because they named the kinesin after me. (Not really, but it’s a fantastic animation just the same.) Check it out.
Animated GIF of Kinesin Protein walking.
©John Liebler. All rights reserved. Contact for licensing.
What’s with the low contrast text? Light gray on white is not easily read.
Looks like something has changed in the WordPress theme. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for calling it to my attention!
Thanks for the animations! Amazing to be able to ‘see’ what’s happening at that tiny scale, thanks for visualizing it for us! And for linking to the amusing cartoon version too, with his crazy flip flops!
Thank you for your kind comment! I appreciate it 🙂
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All the best . Good by.
I am Muslim so against sunnah can not go . All the best Amin .
Darwin had no clue of the complexities of the cell. It’s unbelievably complicated.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
I see comments congratulating God for creation, but I see what looks like the author of a CJ shot explaining that he created it and wants to continue to work with it.
I don’t understand what’s happening. Is this just an awesome CJ clip, or is this something that has been seen and recorded?
Do you believe this has no creator? It’s so beautiful!
There is a marvelous Creator. Creation declares His glory. I love this!
This is a perhaps not exact quotation from someone, I forget who. I used to keep it on the bulletin board next to my lab desk.
“The true scientist needs no miracles. To him, it is miracle enough that all that exists around him occurred by mere chance.
It’s sad that the best some can do is to misrepresent scientists’ view on this. Evolution isn’t ‘mere chance’ and chance-creator dichotomy is a false dichotomy.
Now, if someone doesn’t understand and accept evolution and/or thinks ‘god(s) did it, and he always was there’ is a good explanation, then good luck with that. But I think it’s possible to be a theist without doing a poor job on explaining a scientific theory!
Yes, and it’s called Evolution. It’s not magic but its beauty is magical.
That was my first thought. There is no way this stuff could just evolve.
That’s the whole point with the evolution. And they don’t ‘just evolve’, the mechanism behind it is complex. However, I’m not sure how did you determine ‘there is no way’. Scientists’s job is to figure out in what ways they evolve!
Just because you don’t understand how something works does not make it magic.
My thoughts exactly. 🙂 Thanks for the comments, and thanks to everyone for keeping the conversation polite. 🙂
Evolution isn’t responsible for ‘creating’ only the ugly things! Of course it’s beautiful.
Love this! Fascinating!
Thanks!
I’m confused. My field of research was the signal transduction of opiates (specifically the role of g-proteins), so I know that endorphins are only a few amino acids long, while myosin has 2 2000-amino-acid chains. So how can the really big thing be the endorphin?
You are right, the really big thing that the kinesin motor protein is pulling is a vesicle. There have been some “creative” interpretations attached to this image on FaceBook and Tumblr recently, but what is pictured here is a kinesin motor protein pulling a vesicle along a microtubule. The vesicle could contain neurotransmitters like endorphins, or it could be carrying some other cargo. Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
Fantastic glad I took a walk with John
Thanks!
Thank you for your work…this stuff is soooo cool!
You’re welcome! and thank you. I appreciate the comment. 🙂
Wow, Really, Kinesin needs his Gait Analysis done … 😀
I’m more impressed he’s not bare foot…
The flailing flip flops are cracking me up. Seems like a VERY INEFFICIENT way to walk!
🙂 my thoughts exactly