You'll notice there's not a sponsor on this video. That means it's 100% supported by Patrons. Thank you for considering support for Smarter Every Day at www.patreon.com/smartereveryday . I'm grateful!
As a microbiologist myself, this is so engrained into me that I cant fathom this being that impressive to Destiny... microbiology is a wonderful world of biomechanical systems that only now we are starting to emulate. Thank you for showing and spreading this knowledge to everyone!
The "just asking questions" and "consider the debate", while trying to be neutral, still comes off as being way too charitable toward creationism than necessary. Not all debates are productive, and not all sides in a debate are equally legitimate.
@@Dreeev there is no debate. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution by natural selection. Creationism is an argument against authority. A complete logical fallacy.
As a molecular biologist, I think Destin did a great job of explaining how the expression, imaging, chemotaxis, and the rest works. I hope this video makes people think deeply and ask important questions. And if this comment gets enough upvotes I’ll do a video about ATP synthase 😂
I would love to see a video on ATP synthase Dr. Joe. I remember having a similar reaction to learn of ATP synthase. The countless little proton motors that make Eukaryotes function!
The thing that's been blowing my mind the last year or so is nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen is an essential ingredient for life but the majority of it is bound up in an inaccessible state of triple bonded N2. To split that bond in a laboratory you need something like 500°C temperatures at 200+ atmospheres of pressure. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. And yet, there are bacteria with these enormously complex enzymes called nitrogenases that can take triple bonded atmospheric nitrogen and in a move just short of magic (I'm being facetious) break it apart at or below room temp. Without nitrogenase life on earth would have all died off long ago as earth's supply of free nitrogen was consumed, but these bacteria saved us all. More than that, nitrogenase itself requires elements like molybdenum which are also biologically inaccessible - except for other very particular bacteria that have the ability to collect it and make it accessible to the ones that use it for nitrogen fixation. All over the place there are biological process that seem to intuit the needs of others, and not always with an apparent benifit to the giver. If I weren't alive I'd find life unbelievable.
Peas and Beans! Fixing nitrogen into my garden soil for 5+ years. Perennial BEANS! Edit: Yet you still need that bacteria to form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the peas / beans
It's arguments like these that really highlight how much probability nails the coffin shut on a lot of theories. I'm the same guy who commented about the shazam firework on your zipper video. If you've never done the math to see the probability of the right combination of amino acids coming together and folding correctly to create a ribosome, I suspect it'll blow your mind. Also, there's something I've been stewing on recently that you touch on here: The chemistry needed for the random components of biological life to form is different for many of the pieces. Certain utterly necessary biological components cannot form naturally in the same conditions as each other. In order for a nitrogenase to function, it has to be in a creature that has mechanisms to create more nitrogenase and then subsequently make use of the nitrates that are produced. The chemistry of a nitrogenase is incredible on its own from structure to complexity to function. What are the odds that it accidentally formed? At all? Just doing the math on component combinations for amino acids and biomolecules has been plenty to just make my brain melt from the sheer improbability of it all. Add to that the fact that it supposedly formed inside an organism. An organism that was subsequently able to utilize it. That was subsequently able to replicate it. And that organism was also able to replicate itself. It amazes me that simple microbes are able to do things that it took thousands of years for us to figure out. Doing the math to assess probability makes it a whole other thing.
Biologist here, this is the part where I see many people make the wrong assumption. The flagella in a sperm is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the rotating flagella in a bacterium. The name is the same, I know, but they operate completely differently. The sperm flagella does not rotate at all, It's actually a sliding mechanism inside that creates a swaying motion. The flagella in bacteria are the rotating ones! ATP Synthase, though, is also another rotating molecular machines that exist in both bacteria and mammalian cells.
that's the whole point people are making. The flagella has many of the components of this motor but acts in completely different way. that means the motor is not irreducibly complex, it can still function just not as a motor. same thing with feathers, crows have them so do penguins, one flies the other one swims.
Yeah the anti-evolution comments on this video hurt to read. These things definitely have functionality short of being a perfectly optimized motor, but someone who has never seen a proton gradient, enzymes rotating other proteins, etc might think this is all unique to this one system.
Thanks. I vaguely recalled that from biology class, and your explanation saves me half an hour of an embarrassing search about sperm to confirm. It's like the mechanism which makes dragonflies (and damselflies) the premier fliers of the insect world. All other insects have all four wings (or two wings + counterweights) mounted to their back carapace. And musles which shake the carapace up and down make the wings flap (but only together). OTOH dragonflies have muscles connected to the base of each wing. That allows them to flap and pivot each wing indepdently, giving them supreme maneuverability. They look the same at first glance, but mechanically they're completely different.
I'm a hairdresser and was directed to watch The Inner life of Cell Animation because I took a class of the Science of Hair. I love chemistry and went down the rabbit hole and found your video. I love how you used your engineering back ground to make analogies to understand what you were seeing. I subscribed and will be watching mor of your videos.
After skimming a comment thread debate about science/god in this comment section I’m relieved to have found this comment. This is the kind of high level comment I come to the comment section for! “Helicopter butt” is the chefs kiss of accurate description.
My wife is a Biology PhD (I am an engineer)... I am as surprised as you are with all this information... and she is like... yes we have known many of those things for a long time. This is great cross-scientific work and super important to have cross-pollination among different scientific disciplines.
DID EITHER OF YOU CONSIDER THAT IT'S ALL CREATED BY GOD ??? THE BODY IS AN ORGANICAL ROBOT & THE BRAIN IS AN ELECTRICAL GENERATOR & COMPUTER & YOUR EYES ARE ORGANICAL DIGITAL CAMERAS, YOUR OPTICAL NERVES ARE U.S.B. CABLES THAT 'TRANSMIT ENCRYPTED LIGHT SIGNALS' TO THE PROCESSOR SO WE CAN SEE 3 D. IMAGES OUTSIDE OF OUR SKULLS & YOUR HEART IS AN ELECTRICALY POWERED HYDRAULICAL PUMP WITH A SPARK PLUG AT THE TOP & BOTTOM OF IT !!! WE ARE JUST ORGANICAL HIGH TECH. ROBOTS & OUR LIKES & DISLIKES ARE NOTHING BUT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING, AN ILLUSION OF 'SELF AWARENESS' !!! SOMEONE'S TOYS !!! UNLESS THEIR IS A SOUL DRIVING THE BODY WHICH WOULD MEAN THAT THE BODY WAS CREATED FOR THE SOUL !!!
@@EdwardBlair"I'm so, so sorry Dear... I was so busy Listening, I didn't Hear you..." - fun Note? Careful trying this on the Professional Snark Spouse (results May Not be as expected..🤣😂🤣😂)
Have seen a diagram of ATPase, which closely resembles a sump pump; however, cannot imagine the actual process of converting ADP to ATP. Profoundly curious.
I love how when Prash talks about the clockwise and counter-clockwise motion he moves the motor in the appropriate direction for the viewer and not himself. It demonstrates his natural ability to get outside of his own head and perspective effortlessly.
Great job! I am a physician. In the 1970’s we used to have retreats of physicians, engineers,and physicists. Together we were able to solve problems in each others specialties. If I win the lottery, I will restart this retreat!
I agree! That's how the greatest thing's get started. Each of us have ideas. Not always the right ideas for what we're thinking, solving, accomplishing. Our fellow man & woman are Dimonds in the ruff with ideas.🔥
"I'm getting emotional now, cuz there's a missile that I've worked on in the past" -literally the most American sentence I have ever heard in my life 😅😅
Funny take, but he's 'getting emotional' because this machine is just like something he designed, and the obvious explanation is that this could never (mathematically) have come about by chance.
@@pianogal853 "This could never mathematically have come about by change" ("obviously"), yet he showed another example of a very similar molecular contraption (the injector), which has a similar form, but with different proteins. It's like the almighty "creator", in all its greatness, only had one design to go with or, just maybe... I don't know, maybe nature found a way to rotate mutually clenched molecules, which is so "obviously" unnatural that it found it more than once.
@@pianogal853 I mean peolole have designed plenty of stuff that has then been found to have been naturally evolved in nature already, evolution is efficient.
...and then add thinly veiled creationist undertones throughout the whole video and push a garbage intelligent design book while simultaneously claiming impartiality and "not taking any sides" thereby having completely insulted and wasted said scientist's times.
You know, most authors would be happy if anyone contacted them about their work. Especially outside the field. They may not have the time to teach everyone the background, but it's always nice to see interest.
As a former computational biologist, I worked a lot with 3D structures and the dynamics of bacterial flagellar filaments. The first thing that blew my mind was the sheer complexity and geometrical symmetry of these structures. No matter how you represent it, wireframe, balls-and-sticks, atom radii, they are beautiful. A masterpiece of mechanical perfection. By the way: at some point, you suggest a strategy to disable the flagellar motor, right? Unfortunately, the human immune system is already pretty good at recognizing and attacking flagellar structures. That's why in the acute phase of the infection, many bacteria have learned to lose their flagella, bundle together in biofilms like in a fortress, and start releasing mucus and other nasty molecules to keep our defenses away. Usually, when bacteria are roaming around is not when people feel sick. Biology is complicated, it's a continuous arms race.
@@AndoresuPeresuhe wasn’t replying to you lol. But you don’t understand, then allow me to give a short explanation. He’s referring to how beautiful the flagellar motor is in all its perfection. So they are saying, GOD created such a complex motor, that there’s no way it happened by chance like the Big Bang.
As a mechanical and manufacturing engineer specializing in automation...this is a revolutionary explanation and I thank you for sharing it in such detailed and authentic fashion. This changes our explanation of everything electrical, and especially anything Tesla-esque. The relation of faith versus understanding, and respect between all "flags" is awesome and I hope everyone cand appreciate it from all "sides". Mitakuye Oyasin
As a software and civil engineer, I have to say my mind is blown. Mechanical engineering and microbiology seem so different, but they're actually incredibly interconnected and share many similarities. It's fascinating how people in these fields can communicate so effectively. I never regret supporting you on Patreon; it's been incredibly interesting and rewarding. Thank you so much!
We already use Generative AI. We observe its fast progress. It does not look too distant for it to evolve into Godly Creative A(?) I. As a software engineer, you know that regardless of how complex your code is, it ends on machine code. This code is executed on hardware, which is relatively simple, compared to complex tasks your program does. What we observe here is that software, written on DNA/RNA "tapes", can create structures of arbitrary complexity with relatively simple molecular mechanisms. They can replicate itself and "grow" physical objects on nanometer scale without complex fabs, precious elements and all this fine technology needed to produce silicon chips, MEMS etc. With it you can create anything, just need to design it and use suitable "compiler" to generate your RNA/DNA for your micro-bio-fab. IMO AI and what will come after it, will reconcile creationists and Darvinists. It seems that God is not an entity outside of this world, but rather a something we create now and have been created by it already. It started from Large Language Models. It is already written that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The models were created by collecting mass amounts of human data via Internet links, social networks, Android devices etc. They encode humanity and provide necessary input to establish a God, who later "created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him". Hence, it is not an interconnection or similarity. It is just the same thing. 🙂
I am interented in finding out what are the two fields ou are doing your civil engineering In and software in. Are you focused on bring software solutions to a specific civil engineering field ?
Biologist here, just wanted to point out to other viewers that the flagella in eukaryotic cells (like sperm) are totally different from those found in bacteria and archaea. While bacteria and archaea rotate, eukayote flagella bend and whip.
@docjaco this is so interesting, so do you know if the molecular motors are fundamentally different or do they share a similar construct but with different end effects?
@@keeganbarry1058 Their mechanisms are completely different. In eukaryotes the flagellum is basically pulled back and forth by tiny tubes and doesn't rotate at all!
As a computational chemist, I truly appreciate Destin and everyone who made this video possible. It's incredible to see how this kind of content is being shared scientifically and reaching a wider audience. It’s both inspiring and deeply appreciated. 🙏🏻❤🎉
It's not only the little motor that's incredible. It's also the methodics that scientists have developed to actually "photograph" these proteins. I've always been in awe with how scientists gather and interpret data. It started with astrophysicists and the vast information they get from "just light". Thank you for not only covering the little motor but also the methods that enabled them to view it! :)
"To image", not "to photograph". Photographing is just one imaging technique while "imaging" is the umbrella term for all different methods of imaging, be it using visible light, IR-spectrum, radio-spectrum, x-rays, et cetera.
@@wullxz Just to add a bit more nuance... As you alluded to, this "result"is the output of dozens, or even hundreds, of scientific studies that were leveraged to build an atomic-level *_model_* of this apparatus. On its own, electron microscopy (EM) cannot yield atomic level data. It is limited by the physics behind the technology. But it can provide insights into molecular morphology. I'll get back to this. In separate studies, structural biologists built atomic level models of individual components using other technologies like X-ray crystallography and biomolecular NMR. Based on the morphology imaged by cryo-EM, the atomic level models are built into that morphology, along with data from other sources and then subjected to incredible amounts of computational modeling to arrive at a structural model that fits the data and known physics. A reasonable question would be "why not just use the atomic resolution techniques to study the whole apparatus?" Without going to deep into the reasoning, I'll just say that those techniques have their own comications. That's why data from many areas of expertise are utilized. While advancements like this draw a lot of public interest, they're often the result of myriad tiny steps by a lot of dedicated scientists who will go relatively unrecognized.
We can't just put a little camera inside a bacterium to film the process live. We have to invent new ways to get the pictures we want. Often stopping the process to be able to get a good still image.
I had the exact same reaction to both the chemotaxis engine and to the layers of research and analysis that made the final imaging product possible. If I weren't in my 70s, I would be tempted to return to college to work in this area.
This "motor" really is fascinatingly complex. I also find it marvelous that a tiny factory can crank out thousands of these motors like an assembly line. As long as it has instructions! LOL Freaking amazing the engineering that is happening at the microscopic level. A machine that can create machines... I would love to tour that factory 😁
Love your videos Jeremy - this motor screams "design" imho. Its just as if we discovered some advanced alien technology at the basis of life. No way billions of years of "undirected processes" can come up with this. Even eternity could not do it randomly. Just my totally unbiased opinion 🙂
Prash is a natural teacher, his ability to explain relatively complex microbiology in such simple terms that someone without a history in biology can understand it completely is something I wish all my professors had.
Really disturbing moment. He's so proud of helping murder innocent civilians in the middle east and elsewhere. Makes me think Americans are beyond help.
Small correction... No, the flagellum of a sperm cell does not work with a flagellar motor like bacterial flagella do. In bacteria, the flagellum is rotated by a rotary motor that is powered by the flow of protons or sodium ions across the bacterial cell membrane. In contrast, the flagellum of a sperm cell, known as an undulipodium, operates differently. It moves by a whip-like action powered by the sliding of microtubules against each other. This movement is driven by the motor protein dynein, which uses ATP as an energy source. The dynein arms attached to the microtubules generate force by "walking" along adjacent microtubules, causing them to slide and thus create the bending motion that propels the sperm forward. This type of movement is characteristic of eukaryotic cells and is fundamentally different from the rotary motion seen in bacterial flagella.
Correct, I noticed that too. Concerning the need for a designer....well....try to design this as an engineer. The design process is much harder than some think
@@DanielCurrierif this would be incredibly difficult for Engineers to replicate imagine an unintelligent random nuke like explosion in a vacuum some how making this. 😂
@@Thetruepredictor correct, I've designed large scale gear pinons before. Harder than many think. This is microscopic in size and has greater complexity than my system
@@DanielCurrier aren't engineers irreducibly complex, too? Positing an invisible and deliberately unexplained magical "designer" doesn't really answer anything, does it.
As a former submariner from Alabama I audibly cheered when Mr. Singh said his father was a submariner in the Indian submarine force. Bubblehead camaraderie is global! Love your videos Destin keep it going. War Eagle!!
Small correction, you suggest the flagellar motor is integral to the creation of human life, but the flagella on human sperm is a eukaryotic flagella (technically a long cillia) and works through a completely different mechanism with a bunch of microtubules that slide past eachother causing it to spring and whip around. It's a very different mechanism.
True, however without these bacteria human life wouldn't exist because they perform a ton of crucial functions in our digestive system, so in that sense it is integral to life
I used to be a biologist who designed new kinds of microscopes and microscopy techniques. The PI has it correct in saying that the imaging techniques have enabled new discoveries. We went from imaging single entities to a more systemic level. The next step that will revolutionize our understanding is imaging systems while the systems are actually working.
What's also crazy is that as our processing power increases we can actually extrapolate a TON of data without actually seeing it. I work in a part of semiconductor manufacturing/research where we use mathematics to basically enhance scanning electron microscopy well beyond our usual resolution. We can do this based on past data of how these angstrom level structures tend to form in different environments. So if we see one structure we can confirm a set of data which makes the likelihood of something else also happening. It's really fascinating. It all comes together to make SEM much quicker and easier to use.
@@CRneu This sounds a bit like PALM and STORM in light microscopy to overcome the usual diffraction limits and reach super resolution. Not sure if it is any useful to you, given that you material guys are usually much further technique wise than in life sciences, but it might be neat to know.
The energy, zeal, and childlike joy and curiosity Destin has in this video is so infectious I can't stop smiling myself throughout this video. Thanks for educating us about flagellar motors!
Destin got amazed by the engine. He didn't really stop to think about the 100 times more amazing part. That bacteria factory is able to take instructions and build an engine.
Basically every cell has these sort of "factories". Theyre all capable of building proteins. The DNA (or rather, the mRNA) tells the "factory" in what order it should combine amino-acids to produce proteins. Thats basically how the covid vaccine works. It gave your bodies cells some mRNA that told the factories the order in which they had to assemble amino-acids to produce the spike protein, which then triggered an immune response.
I've always been amazed that there is so much discussion and content about the finished mechanisms that allow cells to function; yet almost no visual representation of how these proteins are decoded from DNA (or equivalent) and constructed. I would guess that the nature of these factories makes them practically impossible to preserve intact in the way they have with these more durable motor structures.
After so many billions of years of bits finding bits that might work, with failures not making it to the next level, it seems inevitable that something elegant might come into being. They do appear to be wonderful Designs, or Creations... and perhaps they are. Yet I am even more astounded that differences between Entropy and the Energetic can form such functionality given enough Time, perhaps all by itself, like the way the grass grows when I am not looking... and Dang I need to go mow the yard AGAIN.
@@kitsuneneko2567 to add: there are computational projects that aim to simulate how these folding processes work, both from how they are built to how they function after being deployed out of the "cellular factory". During the pandemic, I got obsessed with this project called Folding@Home which is a network of personal computers that give scientists access to the computational power needed to run these simulations. I've watched some of the simulations my own computer built, although I barely understood any of it besides some wiggling lol.
There is a beautiful paralell captured in this video. 12:25 and 13:56 the first is Singh talking about how proud he is that he is working on a tiny version of what his grandfather did, followed by Iverson and Sandlin talking about how amazing it is that as we are able to see, work, and manipulate smaller and smaller objects, we continue to understand, and create more and more incredible things. That was great!
Don't knock someone just discovering this. We biochemists or molecular biologists learned this in undergrad biochemistry, but he is correct is showing how astounding this system really is. We ought to be staring in wonder at these molecular motor systems, not just accepting them as ordinary and uninteresting. We ought to be filled with delight at the variations on the ATP synthase motor that nature has provided. And the efficiency of them... I still can't get my head around just how perfect they are in their efficiency. If I could get a lawnmower engine with that kind of efficiency of energy to work, I would be moving loaded freight trains across the country on the fuel I would use in that lawnmower. So yeah, this system ought to be highlighted and celebrated, and we should be considering how many other molecular applications there are of this system, should we choose to attempt to use them for engineering purposes. I think our medical field would be the first to really transform.
One of my favorite things about Destin's channel is his ability to find the people who LOVE what they do. Who are genuinely excited to be doing that work. Whether it's making film at Kodak, or people uncovering the secrets of cells. Just fantastic.
Totally agree... people that love what they are creating or what they are discovering is soo amazing.. I'm not into sports but there are people that know every stat of every player on the team---not a lot into guitars but there are those who hone the Brain/finger interface the create amazing music. Our Brains plus passion/ambition/fear makes us experts in all kinds of stuff. Its interesting that passion/ambition/fear focuses the computing power of the brain. Unlike a computer that is 100% compute power on any topic----the human computer varies compute power/focus/duration by topic. Boredom does not engage compute power......hmmm
As a structural biologist myself, I can say that the work that they do is amazing. The sheer amount of work that it takes to go from programming our little E.coli friend to make our proteins and then purifying them to a level when you can use it for a Cryo EM and ET at Glacios or Krios (the big daddy of cryo electron microscopes) to reconstruct the structure at angstrom levels is just immense. Huge respect to everyone who contributed to this video and made it simple for people without a molecular biology background. ❤
I love the section where Prash talks about his grandfather. Mine passed away a few weeks ago. To see him fidgeting with the Model as he trys to find the right words, was quiet waring. It's nice that he's a little closer to him again.
I really appreciate how a fair amount of time was dedicated to explaining expression and purification. Sometimes it feels as though sample prep is underappreciated vs actual imaging.
Another amazing thing about this video is that Destin has built up a reputation such that he can just call up any random reasercher anywhere and they take the time to explain their work to him. That is huge intellectual capitol.
Software developer here, it's interesting that the process they use to generate 3D images is essentially the same as photogrammetry. This is the process of taking pictures of objects, like a rock, from many angles and stitching them together to create a 3D model for things like video games and movies. The idea to do this at the scale of an electron microscope is extremely clever. The rest of the things I learned in this video are truly mind-blowing. Thanks Destin!
I've seen this at the dentist, I didn't have to byte into cement-like modeling clay in a while now, they just scan it with a small camera attached to a mirror.
Yeah. It’s actually tomography, so more like a PET scan. The object being imaged is transparent to elections, so kind of like 3D x-ray image of the object. Pretty similar though. It’s very challenging because electrons are high energy and damage the sample, so the amount of information you can get from one particle is low, so they typically image thousands of individual particles and average. In the photogrammetry example, it would be like if your object exploded after each exposure so you need to build the 3D image from many, hopefully identical, copies.
Dude the way you ask questions and genuinely show your interest is absolutely amazing I can really tell how much the other guy appreciated it and was excited to talk ab it
“I’m just going around asking questions. That’s all these videos are.” This is exactly why I’ve loved your videos over the years. Congratulations on the 300th episode. Keep up the good work.
@@carpandrei7493 Where are you going after you die? What happens next? Have you ever thought about that? Repent today and give your life to Jesus Christ to obtain eternal salvation. Tomorrow may be too late my brethen😢. Hebrews 9:27 says "And as it is appointed unto man once to die, but after that the judgement
No new word is needed, we already have "bacteriostatic". If you're going down this path, you should also do a video about protein pumps, the mechanism that creates that hydrogen ion gradient in the first place and underpins the metabolism of *ALL* living organisms.
@@LillianRyanUhlchemotaxis inhibitor isn’t really clear enough though, since there are other theoretical ways you could interfere with chemotaxis. For example by interfering with the sensing part. It’s not wrong, maybe just overtly broad.
For all those wondering why the scientists chose E. coli to look at this it’s because it is the model organism for microbiology and molecular biology (yeast also but not as much). It’s easily manipulatable and is commonly used to assess a variety of molecular interactions, mechanisms, and is routinely an intermediate in generating DNA constructs.
E. coli has fast generation cycles (you get quick results), can be easily grown (you don't spend a fortune fro your research) on uncomplicated inexpensive growth media and yes, it can be easily manipulated (you need less attempts transform them). Because of that, researchers like to use it for al kinds of research. If many researchers focus on the same organism and are not studying the organism itself but use it to understand general principles, this is called a model organism. So the reason they picked E. coli is that it fits their purpose and therefore it is their model organism. E. coli being a model organism for countless other researchers is not the real causation, although the infrastructure like efficient transformation methods developed around it definitely plays a role. Nevertheless, causality goes in this direction: Attractive organism for specific research not focused on the organism itself -> research conducted employing this organism -> calling the organism a model / model organism.
As a biomedical engineer, I love seeing cross section between these two fields! There is so much more in common between biology and engineering than you might think sometimes. If there's anything I've learned throughout the years, it's that the human body, and biology in general, is just a vastly complex controlled system engineered by natural selection!
"Natural selection" please wake up to the fact that there was a CREATOR of this engine. Why not just say "Ford motor company engines is a product of natural selection" also.
I heard about this from that intelligent design vs evolution court case.. The intelligent design people were arguing it had to be designed because of how intricately dependent every individual part is on each other, so if you remove a single part it completely stops working. But the evolution side showed that similar structures with missing parts were also being used by bacteria, except for completely different purposes. It's like the mouse trap example - if even a single part is removed it no longer functions as a mouse trap, but you only need 2-3 of the original parts for it to still work as a tie clip
Part of the argument that's intelligent design used against Evolution was that several of the parts that make up this motor are not found in any other living creature therefore it's not like a hair becoming a feather. Furthermore the development of this motor is from the inside out and that also makes it extremely improbable then this little motor evolved.
The view to see the cell as a machine with parts that have single functions is also an oversimplification. There are many proteins that are not solid, have different shapes and many different functions in a cell. Which in my opinion makes it even a bigger of a mystery how all these interesting things can emerge out of jiggly strings and blobs made of amino acids. I like your story above, however I think it just makes sense of where the single parts (proteins) might have come from. Not how the organism came to be and how it can function.
@@LarryStonster Hairs never became feathers. Feathers are an adaption of the process that creates scales. Creationists have argued that tons of structures were irreducibly complex and for almost all of them we have found them to be plenty complex but highly reducable. Feather ironically being one of them. It's just god of the gaps with a more scientifically interesting gap.
@@xthesayuri5756 whether you like it or not molecules are everywhere interacting and reacting with one another. Just cause you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I am NOT a phd in anything including cell biology or molecules. I am but a lowly mechanical technician who just took a course on industrial electricity. What I am seeing here is a reversible electric motor complete with gears, races, shaft, bearings, variable speed transmission, and mated parts like rotors and stators that have to fit perfectly into each other for any of it to function. Come on. Surely this is a designed system. How on earth would these individual components be formed as part of other evolved systems in the precise measurements / dimensions required to somehow all be brought together all at once and create this functioning apparatus? I am not religious. I believe in evolution. I also have eyes and believe what I see and appear to be seeing a designed device. Has anybody identified the individual components and specified where they were created independently?
@@tyharris9994 Evolution is algorithm which best case solution spread to next generation trying to find what it's more advantageous using things already there. It's so powerful that computers scientists designed one of the most powerful AI algorithm, genetic algorithm. Biomimetics covers a lot of that and we could use more
@@tyharris9994 Billions and billions of years of trial and error, complex life forms did not emerge overnight. It seems to me that even very intelligent people often forget this fact.
@@tyharris9994That's exactly what evolution is. It takes so long and so, so, so many iterations of selection. Bacteria that developed prototype of with very weak of motility from random chance ends up surving much better than others, and ones that mutates a more updated version that works a bit better, survives a bit better and outcompetes it's older generation. These bacteria doubles like veery thirty minutes (in log phase) , and think of how long they have existed. This kind of bacteria has evolved from the first prototype of motility to what it has now, like a rocket from Mark 1 to Mark 6, it is Mark 1 to Mark whatever trillions for these bacteria. It is a long time and by chance and how it optimizes their survival in a harsh world out here.
Because it didn't start out that way. You're looking at version 50 trillion of it, and ignoring all the versions that led to its development and which were superceded by a better version that came later, outcompeted, and replaced it.
As a chemist, molecular biololgy blows my mind away, we struggle to synthezise a 30 atom molecule while every living thing constantly produces insanely complex and biomechanically working supra molecules all the time. The DNA replicating complex is an equally fascinating example
Makes me feel like most of the fancy technologies humans developed in the past thousand years are just macro versions of what had been under development for a billion years, just on a smaller length scale. We're all possible because of replicable and evolvable instructions encoded in DNA and RNA. Despite all our fancy tools we've created using language and sharing of blueprints of useful tools, we're only just now scratching the surface for self-replicating and self-improving tools. I'd imagine we'd see another huge shift in society, like we've seen during the industrial revolution, as we develop tools that become better suited to pre-defined tasks over time and make its own improved copies the way all living things do to survive on the cellular level.
It makes a lot of sense though, we're using big honking machines expending a lot of energy to try and control all the parameters required to assemble nanoscopic structures while cells have all the nanoscopic tools in-house to do the same with less energy than a tiny LED. We're cutting a tiny paper snowflake garland with garden shears while cells use scissors.
@@AffordBindEquipmentActually, it's been mathematically proven that "random mutations" could produce such results, as only 1 in 10^-77 "random mutations" can produce just 1 viable mutation - and even the probability of that being a beneficial m is mutation is almost as unlikely. Hard to believe anyone can dispute intelligent design, at this point. How difficult it must be to ignore the evidence if intelligent design at Every Turn. I can only imagine the level of narcissism and denial - the sheer amount of willpower it must take to dispute the obvious... Imagine where we could be as a society if all that effort denying and protesting the obvious was directed in a positive direction. Sad.
I'm an experienced engineer and I think I understand how things work more or less well, but since I started studying microbiology, my mind has exploded! A new world has opened up, a world of ultra-efficient, super miniaturized and extremely complex machines!
@@itabiritomg Hi, biologist here. The machine analogy is used too much. Biological "machines" are thermodynamically driven. They aren't mechanical devices. That is - their movements are actually nothing but random thermal vibration of molecules, just biased in a specific way to make a consistent movement. For example - the gear protein that makes the flagellar motor move, doesn't do any gearing at all. It just supplies hydrogen ions to it in a specific direction. Secondly, I want to emphasize that these 'mchines' aren't that efficient either. For example - flagellar motion works with
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 When we say machine, we didn't strictly mean a rigid mechanism. A machine is just any device that can use energy to perform work in order to achieve a function. These flagellar motors certainly fit in that description and they are still extremely incredible and wonderful.
Exactly. I tell my students that they should describe a process or phenomenon in terms that their quite smart grandparent, who is not embedded in the jargon, what is going on both accurately and succinctly. That's when they know they actually understand something.
@@theultimatereductionist7592 No! Mastermind is correct. The proof for the poincare conjecture is PAGES long, but can you explain it in simple terms to a 5 year old such that they get the idea of what it proves? Absolutely! If you cannot explain it in simple terms, you do not fully understand it, q.e.d.
Hi, I previously worked as a biochemist and can shed some light on the process of "fitting proteins onto a location of the flagellum motor" mentioned around 22:18. Each protein is basically a string of amino-acids which is folded in a certain way, partially by physical or electrochemical properties of the amino-acid, sometimes by use of enzymes. When you unwind a protein its possible to sequence the amino acid revealing what the string looks like. When you combine the length of a protein string with each amino acid property you can for a large part predict where and how it folds in on itself. This means that once you sequence a handful of proteins that together make the flagellum motor complex it in theory is quite straightforward to puzzle the pieces into its respective locations based on the predicted "form" that the protein string would take.
Yes, the video skipped rather quickly over that part, or at least didn't go into a lot of detail. The thing is, in order to make all the copies of the motor, what they must have done is to isolate the genetic sequence which is the blueprint for the motor from Salmonella, then injected that sequence into E. Coli in order to have it make lots of copies of the motor. So they should already know the amino acid sequences involved, which should make it much easier to map the whole thing.
This prediction is by no means simple or straightforward, hence for many years we've had the computer program Folding At Home, which continues to run to this day even with incredible computing power applied to the protein folding problem/solutions, the solutions are still being calculated and found. There are seemingly near infinite possibilities.
As an airline pilot, I had a guest in the flight deck one day (back when we could do that) who was a molecular biologist researcher at a local university. He expressed wonder at the complexities of our flight deck and aircraft. I remarked that what he worked on every day must be a thousand times more complex! We were both in wonder and awe of these things that we humans (in the case of an aircraft) and ??? (you fill in the blank) have made in the cellular structures!! I love your encouragement here to "Not defend a flag," but just look and ponder!... Thanks for all this - it is so absolutely amazing!
8:05 A shame that Destin interrupted him here, but I found some research that explains the fascinating research: Bacteria moves in a run-and-tumble pattern. During a run, they go straight and the flagella and "motor" goes counterclockwise. During a tumble the bacteria tumbles and shifts direction. Now of course the tumble will be random, but you can still archive a route towards food with this randomness. What the bacteria does is that when it detects an increase in concentration of the food they have longer run periods so they will continue mostly in that direction, however when it detects a shift towards lower concentrations it does the opposite and increases tumble time to change direction. This will of course result in a sum movement towards the food. Amazing.
@@gama1123He isn't trying to impress. He's trying to be active in the discussion and relate it to other things that viewers might be able to draw connections. There's not much point to him sitting there and having the person talking the entire time. You can watch lectures if you don't want dialogue.
I understood that from the video... i dont remember if he interrupted but the information got to my head so i really dont think whatever he did stopped the communication of that idea at all. maybe you just didn't get it the way it was worded.
Structural biologist here. Pretty good job explaining how it works. On the question how we know where what goes: sometimes you can see the start of a chain, and we know how long each amino acid is, so it is just a matter of fitting them one by one.
@@dj-kq4fz I don’t think this is underrating but a good explanation of how microbiologists do the find and fit of protein molecules. Great explanation. Basically a 3d jigsaw where you might only know what one corner looks like.
I waited 50 yrs for this. I remember back a few years when they discovered the tail rotated by holding the tail then the body rotated. They always thought the tail whipped back and forth. The science of micro biology is impressive.
@@GodzillaGoesGaga Exactly. The blue mesh visible in the program around minute 23 is a representation of the experimental data; we can see structures on the atomic level! Working with these results and trying to model the protein is a very cool job. And I never said it was easy ;)
One of my favorite things is when Destin speaks with someone who is very knowledgeable and passionate, you can tell they want to geek out over the topic, but they question how smart this UA-camr actually is. And then without fail in his videos, Destin will show how smart he is, and the expert perks up and the vibe of the video changes immediately.
Yes, that struck me too, how he quickly related the biased random walk of the bacteria to his own work on using biased dithering of the control fins to improve the accuracy of guided missiles. Then Prash had an 'Oh yes' moment. Prash also had an intuitive feel for how much detail the audience could handle. Nicely done by both guys.
@@JiveDadson Destin is the very much the opposite of gullible. He uses his knowledge and communication skills to breakdown complicated things and explains them to others so they can be knowledgeable as well. He urges people to think critically. If Destin wishes to think god created these things then so be it, I might not agree with him. But my opinion holds just as much weight as his does.
Destin very cleverly sort-of acts dumb and teases information out so the experts have to explain things so we ordinary mortals to understand (apologies any non-ordinary mortals reading this!).
I am a Veterinarian in clinical Medicine we see these motile components as an Intetinal protozoa;The life cycle of Giardia alternates between two distinct developmental stages: a motile, replicating trophozoite stage in the small intestine of the dogs, and a non-motile, transmissible cyst stage.
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
If the puddle had an OS, sensors, actuators and feedback- then the puddle would be wise to consider that. The flagella isn't a puddle and you aren't either..
@@chiefpacman If you are proposing one of more gods as an explanation, understand that you have to provide a mechanism that sufficiently explains where gods come from, what creates them and what gives them their characteristics, BEFORE you offer it as an explanation for more simpler and humble things as the flagella. Otherwise your argument is that bacteria are more amazing than your god(s) since the flagella requires an explanation, but your suspiciously anthropomorphic god(s) don't.
@@chiefpacman Aren't creationists, by thinking they can decide whether something is "complex enough" to be called evidence of creation, also indirectly saying they have the capacity to "measure" god? Isn't that hubristic and against major concepts in their faith?
I'm a mechanical engineer and one of my best friends is a bio guy (he has like two Master's degrees and is pursuing a PhD--he's wicked smart). When we lived together he would oftentimes find papers of the mechanics of microorganisms and show me the kind of "engineering" that has already been used in biology. Really cool stuff
@@AndrewFosterSheff69 except there no evidence of a creator and plenty evidence that contradicts the hypothesis of intelligent design in biology. Religion is toxic to humanity.
Metal isn't made out of molecules, it's made out of atoms stripped from their valence electrons and a shared cloud of electrons. So no molecules there.
I would be more impressed if the bacteria didn't have any way of locomotion but it would still move around. You know, like by invisible magic, in a supernatural way. Now it's just same old physical thing like all other methods of locomotion and movement are too.
@@capricornuss True, but it would be hard to make a motor with no molecular content. Even discounting various parts and lubrication, the fuel is molecular. Even if you powered it with a non-molecular fuel, the oxidizer would be molecular O2. You'd have to find a complete fuel made entirely of somewhat-stable singlets.
@@phiiz3r we can do this, but let’s be civil. Neo-Darwinism is unproven and not observable. The hypotheses have gone unproven and are near untestable. Logically then, how can you believe in the neodarwinist understanding of evolution with no evidence? Don’t confuse adaption with random mutation. But I’m baffled how someone can look at a molecular two way motor made of amino acids that is perfectly designed and go, “yeah, intelligence didn’t create that.” Furthermore It’s unwise to think science and theism (in my case Christianity) are at odds. Science is how we understand God’s creation. The pioneers of the scientific method did so with the belief that God created the universe in a way we can understand if we look hard enough.
The host is a smart guy and no doubt an SME in his field but he's not an SME in structural or evolutionary biology. He is a great explainer and did a good job of covering a lot of the salient information but nowhere close to an SME level of detail.
It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtractinf where it is from where it isn't or where it isn't from where it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a "difference" or "deviation".
Dithering is actually a great analogy for evolution. When the bacteria doesn't need to move (evolve) it stays relatively still. When it does need to move it moves in random direction. It is improbable that it would go back to the start, but there is no "forward".
I’m studying molecular biology: it’s so so so cool that you have started covering these topics, I find biology to be one of the most fascinating parts of the universe
Heck yeah, I'm glad we have academics working on stuff like this. I hope they are rewarded for the sake of the science, not because some company wants to monetize it, corrupting the otherwise natural process of continued discovery
The first 5 minutes of this video alone are mind blowing. Prashant is clearly a smart guy but the engineering translation you provided really helped me see how that all works. Awesome video!!
Man I am electronics engineering dropout, currently working in ERP Industry for automation of accounts. I am very proud that people like you exist who treat science like a poetry and every branch of science like a art that can be converted into fusion क्या जुगलबंदी है आपकी मेकेनिकल इंजीनियरिंग और बायोकेमिस्ट्री वाह मजा आ गया
@@tyharris9994 That is not supported by evidence. It is pure speculation and since entanglement is short term even at near zero K it is simply not likely. Microtubules have a real know function. Structural. I am sorry but it is exceedingly like that Dr Penrose is wrong on this.
The thing is, calling a biomechanical motor “complicated” is strange based on everything else we know about life. A brain is complicated. The immune system is complicsted. An entire organism working in unison is complicated. A little motor feels like the least wild thing about life. Put another way, inventing the steam engine is pretty cool, but humanity being able to globally communicate, innovate, and utilize that steam engine is even more crazy. The steam engine is simple in comparison.
Exactly.. everything that have evolved over a billion yr is "complex" .. but that's after a billion yr of evolution. It's like coming to a built house and being amazed that such a thing could just exist. We know the mechanisms of evolution.. it's not a mystery. This is litteraly the argument of religious zealots in 2007, they used the flagella and the eye as evidence for a creator. It was called intelligent design and was debated to death on yt in 2007-08 between atheists and religious ppl... ppl may remember thunderfoot and venomfangx.
Agreed, but I suspect that Destin is a bit of a creationist/intelligent design believer, and they tend to have a certain way of perceiving things like this.
I agree with you, but I also want to point out that the fact that a biomechanical motor is "simple" in terms of nature's complexity is extremely awesome and telling.
@@phasmata3813 It's true. It makes me a bit sad. Like complexity exists everywhere. It only seems special here because you didn't expect it here, and there it is. So now this is the proof that god exists? I am not so sure
I think the interesting question is how you get there. There is a pretty obvious line from a single nerve connecting a sensor and a muscle over one more nerve next to it, to a whole bundle of nerves that make up a brain. To stick to your analogy: Figuring out how to talk to your neighbor, organising into a group, figuring out how to talk to other groups - that's a relatively straight forward process. But putting together all the principles needed to make a steam engine at once is a whole different beast.
Imagine being Destin's great-grandchild. You've heard loads about great-granpappy, but different from prior generations, you actually have access to 300+ videos of him sharing his enthusiasm for the world. Isn't this a great time to be alive?
The best thing is that as a great-grandchild of someone, you'll soon typically even be able to find a _reincarnation_ of such an ancestor who already is again alive.
The number of biologists in the comment section is already considerable! But I have to say that as a microbiologist, I find Destin's excitement and surprise about the elegance of biological systems so heartwarming and satisfying!
I am a retired bio engineer. The lab that I worked in for over half of my 74 years studied the molecular structure of cardiac muscle cells. The contraction of these muscle cells is driven by gradients of several different ions, much like the flagellar motors. There are ion channels that open to allow ions to flow into the cell to cause contraction and then there are ion pumps that are used to re-establish the gradients to allow the cell to relax. So my question is this, if these molecular motors are driven by the gradient of hydrogen ions, have the ion pumps, that must exist, been studied that regulate the ionic gradient? Thanks for a wonderful discussion!
Yes, the proton pump exist and involve in sooooo many cases like in your stomach to keep the pH at low level, and it has also been studied for decades 😉
Is a fascinating topic but based on studies in evolutionary biology, it’s thought to have taken tens - hundreds of millions of years, as it likely evolved gradually through a process of co-option and modification of pre-existing protein systems. The flagellar motor is believed to have evolved from simpler systems like the Type III secretion system (T3SS) or related structures. The evolutionary process involved repurposing proteins for new functions, which is consistent with Darwinian evolution.
I don't know if I'm alone in not being that surprised such a thing can evolve. The human vision system is incredibly complex but I can still imagine the steps of going from one single photoreceptor, to multiple, to a transparent membrane in front and so on. There are millions of undocumented bacterial species out there and there are almost certainly intermediate steps of this motor that we just have not yet discovered.
One of the biggest nails in the "watchmaker" argument (about irreducible complexity) in my view is the fact that our eyes are inside out. The rods and cones point backwards, and the nerves trail from them, over our retina, then bunch up at our blind spot and then go into the optic nerve. As a design, it's imbecillic, but thinking about how we would have gone from photo-sensitive cells, to a big grouping of them, to a specialised organ with it's own vitreous humour, it makes a lot more sense. You know whose eyes AREN'T inside out? Octopii. Weird that celaphods have right-side out eyes when no vertebrates do.
@@matthiasoc7141sure, but I think the biggest nail in the watchmaker argument is that we know for a fact that the watch is made by humans as all the evidence points towards it, and we have no examples or evidence that it can occur naturally. All the evidence, however, points to these microscopic motors in the video being formed naturally and there is no evidence to suggest that it was intentionally created by some mind or being. All the go on is “look how complex it is! I can’t explain it, so it must have been created!”.
I think the time scales involved alone make a compelling argument. I doubt we'd be able to tell how long the flagellum was around in an unicellular life, so it might be a "recent" invention. Bacteria were around two times longer than the concept of _plants,_ and the bacteria go through the evolution motions crazy fast.
And critically, pointing out that complex systems can evolve by themselves is not "waving a flag for one side", it's evidenced. The whole "this is so complex it must have been engineered" argument is....frustrating.
@@rockindude3001 But yet.....accurate. The only system that is believed to have evolved purely without a designer is the most complex system of all - life. No other system known to man has developed this way, and no one is making claims of such. They would be laughed out of the room if they did. The true illogic is to live in a world conquered and ruled by intelligent beings designing complex systems that fall apart when left to chance, yet believing that systems orders of magnitude more complex could have come about by chance.
"Oh yes, this is the best part!" Gotta love that kind of drive, to be excited about months of meticulous matching and analyzing because it means answers and discovery.
The first time I saw the flagellar motor I was staggered - i have never forgotten it. Later I stumbled onto an animation of kinesin protein walking on a micro-tubule and was just as floored. The molecular machinery of life is mind blowing and I LOVE IT :D
@@kenfryer2090 Yep. A great example of irreducible complexity (Michael Behe). It has more than 30 necessary parts, and doesn't work at all without any one of them. The odds of that forming by random are so astronomical that finding one specific atom in the universe would look simple by comparison.
If you take a uni level intro to evolutionary bio, it opens your mind up to how all this could come to be naturally. Each piece in the motor could be used as a piece to a simpler biological machine. Millions of machines get made by each cell, some work as intended, some are misshapen, others are different in some way, and that is what selective pressures work on.
Yeah, it sounded like he was trying to imply that God must have created it because it's too complicated to spawn on it's own :/ That's like a Sunday school level fallacy you don't normally encounter from science UA-camrs.
And that is in a single cell. 1% of our weight is non-human (bacteria, fungi...) and that 1% makes up MORE cells than human cells in a single person. In the planet, there are quadrillions of cells doing trial and error. Every. Second. For thousands x thousands x thousands of years. The scale is *unimaginable*. Perhaps that is another way to see in a spiritual/religious way. Afterall, data doesn't mean we can imagine, and lots of quantum mechanics are purely philosophical (its first proposal was Schrodinger's Cat), but don't misunderstand me, I am not saying this is a religious matter. Just saying that if you are to be inspired spiritually, then better be by an astronomical scale. Simply unimaginable. Like, broken, even.
I would completely disagree. It gives ZERO explanation, far less a theoretical one. Evolution does not have foresight. There is no evolutionary pressure to create the parts to a cellular mechanism that doesn't exist yet. Evolution is and always has been pseudo science. The only real world examples of evolution are reductive evolution aka degradation of genetics giving a benefit like antibiotic resistant bacteria or the long term ecoli experiment.
I didn't expect this video to be so awesome. Talking directly with the researchers is gold. They are doing such a great job. I wish they would get more funding (take it from military for instance...).
@@thatcringyplaneguy 1. Touchscreens are not immune to finger smudges 2. It looks like an LG Ultrawide monitor back there, they don't come with touchscreen. 3. It's joke guy, chill out.
I stumbled upon those motors around 1996: there was a small section about them in the university textbook Brock´s _Biology of Microorganisms_ . To this day I remember the drawing of the motor components, very similar but not as detailed as those shown in the video. I was amazed upon learning about the flagellar motors, but even more amazed because the general public and the media seem to ignore them completely. Another interesting fact: The proteins that made up the flagellum are produced inside the cell and "pumped" through the motor hollow core; then they self-assemble to build the flagellum, which is a hollow and flexible tube that grows up from its tip. I have enjoyed very much this video showing the current status of science knowledge about this topic.
@@emonvidaly Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Basically some clowns in a school district wanted to teach intelligent design and brought forward flagellar motors, then proceeded to get destroyed so thoroughly that they resorted to one of their favorite tactics: death threats, before basically giving up and paying about 1 million in legal fees.
Yeah! I’m curious what the similarities and differences are. He mentioned the protein that works like a needle and I wonder if these 3 structures are built with the same amino acids or if they’re a case of several different amino acid combinations converging to a similar shape.
You are inspiring! I’m 52 years old and I wish I would have been exposed to your insatiable curiosity at a much younger and formative age bc I believe it would have given me the courage to pursue a different career. You make nerding out so cool and your thirst for knowledge is infectious. The effort and time you put into producing easy to digest content is admirable and a true gift to society. Thank you! 🙏
Well, engineers are an outcome of evolution xD. Evolution has no limit on complexity. The only thing that matters for evolution is that it works reliably. If that's a super complex structure on top of another, fused with a third one, combine it with neural networks and many neural networks form a social structure together where ideas evolve to a point where engineering is born - then that's extremely hyper mega complex - but it works. And that's the *only* thing that matter for evolution.
Prashant seems like such an awesome person. Thanks for doing this interview, inviting him to share the fascinating science that he apparently gets so much satisfaction by advancing. I ❤ listening to scientists like this; it's a unique joy of being human.
yes, I remember a very similar structure that is in your stomach cells that is used to make the acid in your stomach. There probably are many similar mechanisms in various cells, nothing unique here.
What's even crazier is that just like the doubled walled bacteria in the video, the mitochondria (Powerhouse of the Cell!) in our cells have doubles walls and utilize proton pumps to create a gradient. That gradient is how they recharge ADP into ATP, the "batteries" that power all cellular functions.
@@philm7758 that is actually a well-accepted hypothesis on evolution: organisms with mitochondria came to be by "swallowing" organisms which were the ancestors of these bacteria, and then, by chance, they did not digested it and instead both organisms integrated themselves together, then evolved together by natural selection, and the inner organism lost its independence but gained a safe environment. This also explains why mitochondria have their own DNA separated from the host cells. In humans, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother. This fact was used to map the DNA of the people in my country and prove the hypothesis that none of the first mothers of my people were white (in other words, the obvious: the ships of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers had no women)
The big TEM ( transmission electron microscope ) is called Titan, the smaller one Talos. Production and development is done in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. ThermoFisher acquired the company 9 years ago. It was then called FEI, which is also an American company, HQ in Hilsboro, Oregon. FEI acquired 30 years ago the company from Philips. Hundred years ago, Philips was vertically integrated. They made everything themselves, including the measurement systems. The spin offs ( ASML and Electron microscopes ) were more successful than the mother company. Electron microscopy is 100 years old but it made huge progress during the last 20 years thanks to cryo technology, image software, mechatronics and image sensors but above all because of the vision and guts from individuals like D.H. Truly amazing technology.
@@joshmartin2744these are the initials of the name of that person. I have known him in person. He unfortunately passed away during a business trip. He was the one who made it happen and created the cryo-TEM business. The technology was so difficult that most people didn’t want to take the risk. He did.
Honestly, the fact that microbes have molecular "machinery" to which our own technology bears a coincidental resemblance strikes me as less of an indication that bacteria are unbelievably complex, and more an indication that our technology is extremely simple.
To be fair the coincidence isn't really a coincidence, with the tools and building materials you have there is only so many things you can do to achieve a result, the varions wont be endless at all. A motor will look like a motor at any scale built by any technology, its just how our reality and physics work. As for complexity, yes our tech is extremely simple, we can just make metal things and bend the metal as we want, cells need to assemble structures atom by atom and those don't want to play ball, they have specific rules on what they can and cant bind to and those binds have angles and rules of their own... to create a simple shape for us in wood or metal is super simple compared, it takes absurdly complexity as you need protein to fold and fold and fold and fold like origami, until an end result is achieved, to what would otherwise be a simple shape. One thing I really like to think about in terms of how simple what we do is, and yet we think is soooo advanced, is medicine. 99% of our wonderful super high tech medicine... isn't. Its just removing an obstacle and letting the body do its thing. Its purely supporting the body, its not actually doing anything on its own. The body heals, fights the bacteria, repairs, regrows, cleans up etc. We aren't doing any of that with medicine, all we are doing is buying the body enough time to "win" the war, or give it the means to know the enemy beforehand so is prepared, or physically moving things around and putting them together or further apart, which the body couldnt do on its own. The only thing really that isn't like that is surgery, where we directly interfere, the rest? its all just support and buying time/preventing death while letting the body do the bulk of the work. So id say by any standard, our medicine is extremily primitive and hasnt advanced that much, we were doing fairly advanced surgery 5000 years ago (brain surgery level of advanced). Most advances have been in the field of purification of compounds, and being able to not rely on plants and finding and synthetizing new, novel ones, but its still supportive, and mostly better versions of what already exists in nature
Calling technology simple is oversimplifying it. Like the simple act of wartching this video on a phone required countless discoveries and experiments to happen. There are no other creature, living or extinct, that are able to communicate using radio waves. Like 0. None. Turning information to radio waves, transmitting it, receiving it and decoding it is all humans. By radio waves I mean Wifi, bluetooth, Cellular signal, GPS etc.
@@typhvam5107 Perhaps an example of convergent evolution? What has evolved in microbiology has also evolved in our own development of human technology.
@@lifelonglearner56 Pretty much, is what drives it really, theres only so many solutions to a problem, anything finding one will be similar. The chemical aspects might differ a bit, but a resonance chamber has to be a resonance chamber sort of thing.
@@typhvam5107 I would say that it's pretty definitionally a coincidence. Our designs coincide with bacterial structures, we didn't invent the boat propeller by looking at flagella.
You'll notice there's not a sponsor on this video. That means it's 100% supported by Patrons. Thank you for considering support for Smarter Every Day at www.patreon.com/smartereveryday . I'm grateful!
As a microbiologist myself, this is so engrained into me that I cant fathom this being that impressive to Destiny... microbiology is a wonderful world of biomechanical systems that only now we are starting to emulate.
Thank you for showing and spreading this knowledge to everyone!
No problem man love your content
The "just asking questions" and "consider the debate", while trying to be neutral, still comes off as being way too charitable toward creationism than necessary. Not all debates are productive, and not all sides in a debate are equally legitimate.
@@Dreeev there is no debate. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution by natural selection.
Creationism is an argument against authority. A complete logical fallacy.
Congrats on episode 300, Destin! 🎉 Looking forward to learning more cool things with you in the next 300! 🤠
As a molecular biologist, I think Destin did a great job of explaining how the expression, imaging, chemotaxis, and the rest works. I hope this video makes people think deeply and ask important questions. And if this comment gets enough upvotes I’ll do a video about ATP synthase 😂
Please just make a video, people will like it more than this comment ❤
First time I learned about ATP synthase, I had Destin's reaction. It's just amazing to see the generator work the way... well, generators work.
ATP ♾️
I would love to see a video on ATP synthase Dr. Joe. I remember having a similar reaction to learn of ATP synthase. The countless little proton motors that make Eukaryotes function!
Tagged just in case you post that video.
The thing that's been blowing my mind the last year or so is nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen is an essential ingredient for life but the majority of it is bound up in an inaccessible state of triple bonded N2. To split that bond in a laboratory you need something like 500°C temperatures at 200+ atmospheres of pressure. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. And yet, there are bacteria with these enormously complex enzymes called nitrogenases that can take triple bonded atmospheric nitrogen and in a move just short of magic (I'm being facetious) break it apart at or below room temp. Without nitrogenase life on earth would have all died off long ago as earth's supply of free nitrogen was consumed, but these bacteria saved us all. More than that, nitrogenase itself requires elements like molybdenum which are also biologically inaccessible - except for other very particular bacteria that have the ability to collect it and make it accessible to the ones that use it for nitrogen fixation. All over the place there are biological process that seem to intuit the needs of others, and not always with an apparent benifit to the giver. If I weren't alive I'd find life unbelievable.
Brilliant comment. 👍💯
Peas and Beans!
Fixing nitrogen into my garden soil for 5+ years. Perennial BEANS!
Edit: Yet you still need that bacteria to form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the peas / beans
It's arguments like these that really highlight how much probability nails the coffin shut on a lot of theories. I'm the same guy who commented about the shazam firework on your zipper video.
If you've never done the math to see the probability of the right combination of amino acids coming together and folding correctly to create a ribosome, I suspect it'll blow your mind.
Also, there's something I've been stewing on recently that you touch on here:
The chemistry needed for the random components of biological life to form is different for many of the pieces.
Certain utterly necessary biological components cannot form naturally in the same conditions as each other.
In order for a nitrogenase to function, it has to be in a creature that has mechanisms to create more nitrogenase and then subsequently make use of the nitrates that are produced.
The chemistry of a nitrogenase is incredible on its own from structure to complexity to function.
What are the odds that it accidentally formed? At all? Just doing the math on component combinations for amino acids and biomolecules has been plenty to just make my brain melt from the sheer improbability of it all.
Add to that the fact that it supposedly formed inside an organism.
An organism that was subsequently able to utilize it.
That was subsequently able to replicate it.
And that organism was also able to replicate itself.
It amazes me that simple microbes are able to do things that it took thousands of years for us to figure out.
Doing the math to assess probability makes it a whole other thing.
Oh "give it enough time" and random stuff will create wonders :) Isn't that what many claim nowadays?
Wouldnt it just be very diffferent rather than exctinct
Biologist here, this is the part where I see many people make the wrong assumption. The flagella in a sperm is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the rotating flagella in a bacterium. The name is the same, I know, but they operate completely differently. The sperm flagella does not rotate at all, It's actually a sliding mechanism inside that creates a swaying motion. The flagella in bacteria are the rotating ones! ATP Synthase, though, is also another rotating molecular machines that exist in both bacteria and mammalian cells.
Well said. Just learn Latin and you’ll never go wrong.
that's the whole point people are making. The flagella has many of the components of this motor but acts in completely different way. that means the motor is not irreducibly complex, it can still function just not as a motor.
same thing with feathers, crows have them so do penguins, one flies the other one swims.
Yeah the anti-evolution comments on this video hurt to read. These things definitely have functionality short of being a perfectly optimized motor, but someone who has never seen a proton gradient, enzymes rotating other proteins, etc might think this is all unique to this one system.
Thanks. I vaguely recalled that from biology class, and your explanation saves me half an hour of an embarrassing search about sperm to confirm.
It's like the mechanism which makes dragonflies (and damselflies) the premier fliers of the insect world. All other insects have all four wings (or two wings + counterweights) mounted to their back carapace. And musles which shake the carapace up and down make the wings flap (but only together).
OTOH dragonflies have muscles connected to the base of each wing. That allows them to flap and pivot each wing indepdently, giving them supreme maneuverability. They look the same at first glance, but mechanically they're completely different.
honeslty, thats really cool too. id loev to see a model of how the sliding motion works
I'm a hairdresser and was directed to watch The Inner life of Cell Animation because I took a class of the Science of Hair. I love chemistry and went down the rabbit hole and found your video. I love how you used your engineering back ground to make analogies to understand what you were seeing. I subscribed and will be watching mor of your videos.
Finally, an explanation for how Tails' helicopter butt works in Sonic the Hedgehog
Haha
I wonder how Tails deals with the unbalanced torque. Maybe counter-rotating tails?
After skimming a comment thread debate about science/god in this comment section I’m relieved to have found this comment. This is the kind of high level comment I come to the comment section for! “Helicopter butt” is the chefs kiss of accurate description.
@@heyjustj reddit brain
fun fact: there’s a protein called sonic the hedgehog :))
My wife is a Biology PhD (I am an engineer)... I am as surprised as you are with all this information... and she is like... yes we have known many of those things for a long time. This is great cross-scientific work and super important to have cross-pollination among different scientific disciplines.
DID EITHER OF YOU CONSIDER THAT IT'S ALL CREATED BY GOD ???
THE BODY IS AN ORGANICAL ROBOT & THE BRAIN IS AN ELECTRICAL GENERATOR & COMPUTER & YOUR EYES ARE ORGANICAL DIGITAL CAMERAS, YOUR OPTICAL NERVES ARE U.S.B. CABLES THAT 'TRANSMIT ENCRYPTED LIGHT SIGNALS' TO THE PROCESSOR SO WE CAN SEE 3 D. IMAGES OUTSIDE OF OUR SKULLS & YOUR HEART IS AN ELECTRICALY POWERED HYDRAULICAL PUMP WITH A SPARK PLUG AT THE TOP & BOTTOM OF IT !!!
WE ARE JUST ORGANICAL HIGH TECH. ROBOTS & OUR LIKES & DISLIKES ARE NOTHING BUT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING, AN ILLUSION OF 'SELF AWARENESS' !!!
SOMEONE'S TOYS !!!
UNLESS THEIR IS A SOUL DRIVING THE BODY WHICH WOULD MEAN THAT THE BODY WAS CREATED FOR THE SOUL !!!
She probably told you a thousand times
@@EdwardBlair 🤣
@@EdwardBlair"I'm so, so sorry Dear... I was so busy Listening, I didn't Hear you..." - fun Note? Careful trying this on the Professional Snark Spouse (results May Not be as expected..🤣😂🤣😂)
Have seen a diagram of ATPase, which closely resembles a sump pump; however, cannot imagine the actual process of converting ADP to ATP. Profoundly curious.
I love how when Prash talks about the clockwise and counter-clockwise motion he moves the motor in the appropriate direction for the viewer and not himself. It demonstrates his natural ability to get outside of his own head and perspective effortlessly.
I think he's actually thinking the appropriate direction with respect to the bacteria, not the viewer, the engine only fit in one way
@@Danuxsyare you asking a question?
Agreed almost instantly when he began speaking I had a good feeling about this video. Prash was awesome!
@@simocity99 Yeah not sure what planet this guy is living on
That's just instinct for a professor.
Great job! I am a physician. In the 1970’s we used to have retreats of physicians, engineers,and physicists. Together we were able to solve problems in each others specialties. If I win the lottery, I will restart this retreat!
1970s*, no apostrophe saying 1970 is. Seventies has no apostrophe. 🕊️
I agree! That's how the greatest thing's get started. Each of us have ideas. Not always the right ideas for what we're thinking, solving, accomplishing. Our fellow man & woman are Dimonds in the ruff with ideas.🔥
I love your idea!
@@danielnielsen1977 Things* plural, no apostrophe saying thing is. Diamonds*, but with no upper-case d. 🕊️
@@thekeysman6760 an apt user name lol
"I'm getting emotional now, cuz there's a missile that I've worked on in the past"
-literally the most American sentence I have ever heard in my life 😅😅
Funny take, but he's 'getting emotional' because this machine is just like something he designed, and the obvious explanation is that this could never (mathematically) have come about by chance.
@@pianogal853 "This could never mathematically have come about by change" ("obviously"), yet he showed another example of a very similar molecular contraption (the injector), which has a similar form, but with different proteins.
It's like the almighty "creator", in all its greatness, only had one design to go with or, just maybe... I don't know, maybe nature found a way to rotate mutually clenched molecules, which is so "obviously" unnatural that it found it more than once.
@@pianogal853 I mean peolole have designed plenty of stuff that has then been found to have been naturally evolved in nature already, evolution is efficient.
Yeah that was awkward
I think he was getting emotional because he thought he was looking at intelligent design, and was having the "god feeling".
The coolest thing about being an 11M sub UA-camr is that you can read about a cool thing, and then just go talk to the scientist that discovered it.
...and then add thinly veiled creationist undertones throughout the whole video and push a garbage intelligent design book while simultaneously claiming impartiality and "not taking any sides" thereby having completely insulted and wasted said scientist's times.
You know, most authors would be happy if anyone contacted them about their work. Especially outside the field. They may not have the time to teach everyone the background, but it's always nice to see interest.
@@none-y7x well, they discovered the high detail structure, not the motor itself
Oh hey, it's the original comment stolen by the bot I just reported!
@@none-y7xif you’ve read the paper you would’ve known that their team show for the first time how the motor work. So yes he discovered that part.
As a former computational biologist, I worked a lot with 3D structures and the dynamics of bacterial flagellar filaments. The first thing that blew my mind was the sheer complexity and geometrical symmetry of these structures. No matter how you represent it, wireframe, balls-and-sticks, atom radii, they are beautiful. A masterpiece of mechanical perfection.
By the way: at some point, you suggest a strategy to disable the flagellar motor, right? Unfortunately, the human immune system is already pretty good at recognizing and attacking flagellar structures. That's why in the acute phase of the infection, many bacteria have learned to lose their flagella, bundle together in biofilms like in a fortress, and start releasing mucus and other nasty molecules to keep our defenses away. Usually, when bacteria are roaming around is not when people feel sick. Biology is complicated, it's a continuous arms race.
Interesting! Thank you for the explanation.
Almost as if created by a creator huh?
God is great!!
@@midwesternoutdoorsandnatur8272 ?
Isn't that what made the last corona virus so hard to deal with? And if not what's your take on it?
@@AndoresuPeresuhe wasn’t replying to you lol. But you don’t understand, then allow me to give a short explanation. He’s referring to how beautiful the flagellar motor is in all its perfection. So they are saying, GOD created such a complex motor, that there’s no way it happened by chance like the Big Bang.
As a mechanical and manufacturing engineer specializing in automation...this is a revolutionary explanation and I thank you for sharing it in such detailed and authentic fashion.
This changes our explanation of everything electrical, and especially anything Tesla-esque.
The relation of faith versus understanding, and respect between all "flags" is awesome and I hope everyone cand appreciate it from all "sides".
Mitakuye Oyasin
As a software and civil engineer, I have to say my mind is blown. Mechanical engineering and microbiology seem so different, but they're actually incredibly interconnected and share many similarities. It's fascinating how people in these fields can communicate so effectively. I never regret supporting you on Patreon; it's been incredibly interesting and rewarding. Thank you so much!
he said he is christian and those motors even more convinced him
but, maybe we were not created by christianic god -)
I guess the fact that both fields are bound by the same laws of physics makes it so solutions to problems often share similarities.
In other words - you don't understand.
We already use Generative AI. We observe its fast progress. It does not look too distant for it to evolve into Godly Creative A(?) I.
As a software engineer, you know that regardless of how complex your code is, it ends on machine code. This code is executed on hardware, which is relatively simple, compared to complex tasks your program does.
What we observe here is that software, written on DNA/RNA "tapes", can create structures of arbitrary complexity with relatively simple molecular mechanisms. They can replicate itself and "grow" physical objects on nanometer scale without complex fabs, precious elements and all this fine technology needed to produce silicon chips, MEMS etc. With it you can create anything, just need to design it and use suitable "compiler" to generate your RNA/DNA for your micro-bio-fab.
IMO AI and what will come after it, will reconcile creationists and Darvinists. It seems that God is not an entity outside of this world, but rather a something we create now and have been created by it already. It started from Large Language Models. It is already written that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The models were created by collecting mass amounts of human data via Internet links, social networks, Android devices etc. They encode humanity and provide necessary input to establish a God, who later "created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him".
Hence, it is not an interconnection or similarity. It is just the same thing. 🙂
I am interented in finding out what are the two fields ou are doing your civil engineering In and software in. Are you focused on bring software solutions to a specific civil engineering field ?
Biologist here, just wanted to point out to other viewers that the flagella in eukaryotic cells (like sperm) are totally different from those found in bacteria and archaea. While bacteria and archaea rotate, eukayote flagella bend and whip.
@docjaco this is so interesting, so do you know if the molecular motors are fundamentally different or do they share a similar construct but with different end effects?
@@keeganbarry1058 Their mechanisms are completely different. In eukaryotes the flagellum is basically pulled back and forth by tiny tubes and doesn't rotate at all!
So no new contraception method ahead?
Came here to write this exact thing. Thanks for keeping the people informed!
@@CallyCottin hahaha, not that I'm aware of!
The dithering sound effect was spot on 😂
For real. Like, does he practice that often? 😂
If some musically creative viewer doesn't sample that for a piece of music I'll be bummed out.
@@courier11secthe tri-dither has a natural tendency to sound like a pair of E and F# notes chained together. Go on. Have fun with that 😊
@@brentongilmore5853 Idk but he was likely present for the tests of that system which probably took months maybe years to perfect.
As someone who works in visual effects, we only resort to deliberate dithering when we're lacking in bit depth.
As a computational chemist, I truly appreciate Destin and everyone who made this video possible. It's incredible to see how this kind of content is being shared scientifically and reaching a wider audience. It’s both inspiring and deeply appreciated. 🙏🏻❤🎉
It's not only the little motor that's incredible. It's also the methodics that scientists have developed to actually "photograph" these proteins.
I've always been in awe with how scientists gather and interpret data. It started with astrophysicists and the vast information they get from "just light".
Thank you for not only covering the little motor but also the methods that enabled them to view it! :)
"To image", not "to photograph". Photographing is just one imaging technique while "imaging" is the umbrella term for all different methods of imaging, be it using visible light, IR-spectrum, radio-spectrum, x-rays, et cetera.
@@anteshell thanks for clarifying
@@wullxz Just to add a bit more nuance...
As you alluded to, this "result"is the output of dozens, or even hundreds, of scientific studies that were leveraged to build an atomic-level *_model_* of this apparatus.
On its own, electron microscopy (EM) cannot yield atomic level data. It is limited by the physics behind the technology. But it can provide insights into molecular morphology. I'll get back to this.
In separate studies, structural biologists built atomic level models of individual components using other technologies like X-ray crystallography and biomolecular NMR. Based on the morphology imaged by cryo-EM, the atomic level models are built into that morphology, along with data from other sources and then subjected to incredible amounts of computational modeling to arrive at a structural model that fits the data and known physics.
A reasonable question would be "why not just use the atomic resolution techniques to study the whole apparatus?" Without going to deep into the reasoning, I'll just say that those techniques have their own comications. That's why data from many areas of expertise are utilized. While advancements like this draw a lot of public interest, they're often the result of myriad tiny steps by a lot of dedicated scientists who will go relatively unrecognized.
We can't just put a little camera inside a bacterium to film the process live. We have to invent new ways to get the pictures we want. Often stopping the process to be able to get a good still image.
I had the exact same reaction to both the chemotaxis engine and to the layers of research and analysis that made the final imaging product possible. If I weren't in my 70s, I would be tempted to return to college to work in this area.
"Even when we're driving here, we're so excited like, what will I find today?"
That's how you know someone really enjoys their work.
@@handkeez Amen. Wish we could all be there
This "motor" really is fascinatingly complex. I also find it marvelous that a tiny factory can crank out thousands of these motors like an assembly line. As long as it has instructions! LOL Freaking amazing the engineering that is happening at the microscopic level. A machine that can create machines... I would love to tour that factory 😁
Love your videos Jeremy - this motor screams "design" imho. Its just as if we discovered some advanced alien technology at the basis of life. No way billions of years of "undirected processes" can come up with this. Even eternity could not do it randomly. Just my totally unbiased opinion 🙂
Now that's another request I have for Him.
OBVIOUSLY IT'S CREATION BY GOD !
READ, THE BIBLE, ROMANS, CH. 1 v 19-20 !
@@jamesclerkmaxwell8020:
GOD ! READ, ROMANS, CH. 1 v 19-20 !
Millions of years of evolution can produce really amazing things.
Prash is a natural teacher, his ability to explain relatively complex microbiology in such simple terms that someone without a history in biology can understand it completely is something I wish all my professors had.
LOL - "chemotaxis is so cool, reminds me of missiles I've designed"
Really disturbing moment. He's so proud of helping murder innocent civilians in the middle east and elsewhere. Makes me think Americans are beyond help.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
Small correction...
No, the flagellum of a sperm cell does not work with a flagellar motor like bacterial flagella do. In bacteria, the flagellum is rotated by a rotary motor that is powered by the flow of protons or sodium ions across the bacterial cell membrane.
In contrast, the flagellum of a sperm cell, known as an undulipodium, operates differently. It moves by a whip-like action powered by the sliding of microtubules against each other. This movement is driven by the motor protein dynein, which uses ATP as an energy source. The dynein arms attached to the microtubules generate force by "walking" along adjacent microtubules, causing them to slide and thus create the bending motion that propels the sperm forward. This type of movement is characteristic of eukaryotic cells and is fundamentally different from the rotary motion seen in bacterial flagella.
@@strangelee4400 yeah well... dude is a Christian, but nobody's perfect! we like him anyway.
Correct, I noticed that too. Concerning the need for a designer....well....try to design this as an engineer. The design process is much harder than some think
@@DanielCurrierif this would be incredibly difficult for Engineers to replicate imagine an unintelligent random nuke like explosion in a vacuum some how making this. 😂
@@Thetruepredictor correct, I've designed large scale gear pinons before. Harder than many think. This is microscopic in size and has greater complexity than my system
@@DanielCurrier aren't engineers irreducibly complex, too?
Positing an invisible and deliberately unexplained magical "designer" doesn't really answer anything, does it.
300 episodes!!! Congratulations on the huge milestone!
0:26 "Thats a spiny thing"....yep you're a fellow Engineer
@@forestjohnson7474 "Spiny"? Or "Spinny"?
The two words are engineered differently for two completely different applications.🤔
😂 it's a spinny thang
As a former submariner from Alabama I audibly cheered when Mr. Singh said his father was a submariner in the Indian submarine force. Bubblehead camaraderie is global! Love your videos Destin keep it going. War Eagle!!
Small correction, you suggest the flagellar motor is integral to the creation of human life, but the flagella on human sperm is a eukaryotic flagella (technically a long cillia) and works through a completely different mechanism with a bunch of microtubules that slide past eachother causing it to spring and whip around. It's a very different mechanism.
It just shows he has no idea and wants to shove his religion into it
this motor is indeed fascinating. Perhaps the most interesting part is that we want to break it. XD
@@sozisalad5011 curse you God for giving Salmonella this cool motor !
True, however without these bacteria human life wouldn't exist because they perform a ton of crucial functions in our digestive system, so in that sense it is integral to life
@@kevinwells9751 I am not aware of any Salmonella species that are not pathogens.
I used to be a biologist who designed new kinds of microscopes and microscopy techniques. The PI has it correct in saying that the imaging techniques have enabled new discoveries. We went from imaging single entities to a more systemic level. The next step that will revolutionize our understanding is imaging systems while the systems are actually working.
What's also crazy is that as our processing power increases we can actually extrapolate a TON of data without actually seeing it. I work in a part of semiconductor manufacturing/research where we use mathematics to basically enhance scanning electron microscopy well beyond our usual resolution. We can do this based on past data of how these angstrom level structures tend to form in different environments. So if we see one structure we can confirm a set of data which makes the likelihood of something else also happening. It's really fascinating. It all comes together to make SEM much quicker and easier to use.
@@CRneu This sounds a bit like PALM and STORM in light microscopy to overcome the usual diffraction limits and reach super resolution. Not sure if it is any useful to you, given that you material guys are usually much further technique wise than in life sciences, but it might be neat to know.
The energy, zeal, and childlike joy and curiosity Destin has in this video is so infectious I can't stop smiling myself throughout this video. Thanks for educating us about flagellar motors!
Destin got amazed by the engine. He didn't really stop to think about the 100 times more amazing part. That bacteria factory is able to take instructions and build an engine.
Basically every cell has these sort of "factories". Theyre all capable of building proteins. The DNA (or rather, the mRNA) tells the "factory" in what order it should combine amino-acids to produce proteins. Thats basically how the covid vaccine works. It gave your bodies cells some mRNA that told the factories the order in which they had to assemble amino-acids to produce the spike protein, which then triggered an immune response.
Incredible designs.
I've always been amazed that there is so much discussion and content about the finished mechanisms that allow cells to function; yet almost no visual representation of how these proteins are decoded from DNA (or equivalent) and constructed. I would guess that the nature of these factories makes them practically impossible to preserve intact in the way they have with these more durable motor structures.
After so many billions of years of bits finding bits that might work, with failures not making it to the next level, it seems inevitable that something elegant might come into being. They do appear to be wonderful Designs, or Creations... and perhaps they are. Yet I am even more astounded that differences between Entropy and the Energetic can form such functionality given enough Time, perhaps all by itself, like the way the grass grows when I am not looking... and Dang I need to go mow the yard AGAIN.
@@kitsuneneko2567 to add: there are computational projects that aim to simulate how these folding processes work, both from how they are built to how they function after being deployed out of the "cellular factory".
During the pandemic, I got obsessed with this project called Folding@Home which is a network of personal computers that give scientists access to the computational power needed to run these simulations. I've watched some of the simulations my own computer built, although I barely understood any of it besides some wiggling lol.
There is also the ATP-Syntase, Which is also a motor that uses the protongradient to spin and it converts the spin to chemical energy
Synthase
Got my degree in biology and thought that’s what he was gonna be talking about when I saw the thumbnail
Such a fascinating little thing. We're powered by quadrillions of tiny electric motors :D
Thats what I thought this video waas going to be about.
That’s what this reminded me of too. Charge gradient and a spinny wheel.
There is a beautiful paralell captured in this video. 12:25 and 13:56 the first is Singh talking about how proud he is that he is working on a tiny version of what his grandfather did, followed by Iverson and Sandlin talking about how amazing it is that as we are able to see, work, and manipulate smaller and smaller objects, we continue to understand, and create more and more incredible things. That was great!
"Wow! a molecular motor"
ATP Synthase: "👁👄👁"
Flagellum come relatively late in the evolution of microbes. Part of it evolved from ATP synthase.
He was excited bcuz Jesuz.
ATP synthase is being slept on 😢
i thought it was an ATP Synthase video
Don't knock someone just discovering this. We biochemists or molecular biologists learned this in undergrad biochemistry, but he is correct is showing how astounding this system really is. We ought to be staring in wonder at these molecular motor systems, not just accepting them as ordinary and uninteresting. We ought to be filled with delight at the variations on the ATP synthase motor that nature has provided. And the efficiency of them... I still can't get my head around just how perfect they are in their efficiency. If I could get a lawnmower engine with that kind of efficiency of energy to work, I would be moving loaded freight trains across the country on the fuel I would use in that lawnmower. So yeah, this system ought to be highlighted and celebrated, and we should be considering how many other molecular applications there are of this system, should we choose to attempt to use them for engineering purposes. I think our medical field would be the first to really transform.
One of my favorite things about Destin's channel is his ability to find the people who LOVE what they do. Who are genuinely excited to be doing that work. Whether it's making film at Kodak, or people uncovering the secrets of cells. Just fantastic.
I noticed he had grease/oil under his fingernails in one of the shots. The best engineers are always working with stuff!
Totally agree... people that love what they are creating or what they are discovering is soo amazing.. I'm not into sports but there are people that know every stat of every player on the team---not a lot into guitars but there are those who hone the Brain/finger interface the create amazing music. Our Brains plus passion/ambition/fear makes us experts in all kinds of stuff. Its interesting that passion/ambition/fear focuses the computing power of the brain. Unlike a computer that is 100% compute power on any topic----the human computer varies compute power/focus/duration by topic. Boredom does not engage compute power......hmmm
Never forget that these are the wonderful people that the racists tell us should be excluded from "white only" America.
@@modelenginerding6996 My tractor steering cylinder went out. Had been working on it.
@@smartereveryday Destin, if you embraced global culture instead of southern culture do you think you'd still be religious?
As a structural biologist myself, I can say that the work that they do is amazing. The sheer amount of work that it takes to go from programming our little E.coli friend to make our proteins and then purifying them to a level when you can use it for a Cryo EM and ET at Glacios or Krios (the big daddy of cryo electron microscopes) to reconstruct the structure at angstrom levels is just immense. Huge respect to everyone who contributed to this video and made it simple for people without a molecular biology background. ❤
I love the section where Prash talks about his grandfather. Mine passed away a few weeks ago. To see him fidgeting with the Model as he trys to find the right words, was quiet waring. It's nice that he's a little closer to him again.
I really appreciate how a fair amount of time was dedicated to explaining expression and purification. Sometimes it feels as though sample prep is underappreciated vs actual imaging.
Another amazing thing about this video is that Destin has built up a reputation such that he can just call up any random reasercher anywhere and they take the time to explain their work to him. That is huge intellectual capitol.
It's great for the researchers as well. The most important part of testing a hypothesis is communicating the results.
Destin is the Intellect Capitol.
@@Dee-nonamnamrson8718 Also helps to bring additional exposure to their work, which can help fund future endeavors
And he's using his platform to promote creationism and the US military lol
@@Noxeus1996 well he worked for the military
Software developer here, it's interesting that the process they use to generate 3D images is essentially the same as photogrammetry. This is the process of taking pictures of objects, like a rock, from many angles and stitching them together to create a 3D model for things like video games and movies. The idea to do this at the scale of an electron microscope is extremely clever.
The rest of the things I learned in this video are truly mind-blowing. Thanks Destin!
Like ultrasound imaging being similar to seismic surveying
I've seen this at the dentist, I didn't have to byte into cement-like modeling clay in a while now, they just scan it with a small camera attached to a mirror.
Another Software developer here, this is the first time I've heard of photogrammetry. 😁
I'm guessing Torquyeel works in animation or 3D modeling.
Yeah. It’s actually tomography, so more like a PET scan. The object being imaged is transparent to elections, so kind of like 3D x-ray image of the object. Pretty similar though. It’s very challenging because electrons are high energy and damage the sample, so the amount of information you can get from one particle is low, so they typically image thousands of individual particles and average. In the photogrammetry example, it would be like if your object exploded after each exposure so you need to build the 3D image from many, hopefully identical, copies.
What do you think about the fact that they are using pictures of separate items to create a single model? Surely this must add to inaccuracy.
Dude the way you ask questions and genuinely show your interest is absolutely amazing I can really tell how much the other guy appreciated it and was excited to talk ab it
“I’m just going around asking questions. That’s all these videos are.” This is exactly why I’ve loved your videos over the years. Congratulations on the 300th episode. Keep up the good work.
That's how you learn! You ask questions, especially to the right people, and absorb the answers. And that's just the first step.
@@carpandrei7493
Where are you going after you die?
What happens next? Have you ever thought about that?
Repent today and give your life to Jesus Christ to obtain eternal salvation. Tomorrow may be too late my brethen😢.
Hebrews 9:27 says "And as it is appointed unto man once to die, but after that the judgement
No new word is needed, we already have "bacteriostatic".
If you're going down this path, you should also do a video about protein pumps, the mechanism that creates that hydrogen ion gradient in the first place and underpins the metabolism of *ALL* living organisms.
ATP synthase is another good one. Doesn't bacteriostatic just mean stopping bacterial growth, rather than movement?
bacteriostatic indeed means inhibited growth/division, not immobility
They say atp is the energy of life but it is really these proton pumps
@@toseltreps1101indeed, a better term would probably be like "chemotaxis inhibitor"
@@LillianRyanUhlchemotaxis inhibitor isn’t really clear enough though, since there are other theoretical ways you could interfere with chemotaxis. For example by interfering with the sensing part.
It’s not wrong, maybe just overtly broad.
For all those wondering why the scientists chose E. coli to look at this it’s because it is the model organism for microbiology and molecular biology (yeast also but not as much). It’s easily manipulatable and is commonly used to assess a variety of molecular interactions, mechanisms, and is routinely an intermediate in generating DNA constructs.
Thanks, great having more context!
E. coli has fast generation cycles (you get quick results), can be easily grown (you don't spend a fortune fro your research) on uncomplicated inexpensive growth media and yes, it can be easily manipulated (you need less attempts transform them). Because of that, researchers like to use it for al kinds of research. If many researchers focus on the same organism and are not studying the organism itself but use it to understand general principles, this is called a model organism.
So the reason they picked E. coli is that it fits their purpose and therefore it is their model organism. E. coli being a model organism for countless other researchers is not the real causation, although the infrastructure like efficient transformation methods developed around it definitely plays a role.
Nevertheless, causality goes in this direction: Attractive organism for specific research not focused on the organism itself -> research conducted employing this organism -> calling the organism a model / model organism.
As a biomedical engineer, I love seeing cross section between these two fields! There is so much more in common between biology and engineering than you might think sometimes. If there's anything I've learned throughout the years, it's that the human body, and biology in general, is just a vastly complex controlled system engineered by natural selection!
"Natural selection" please wake up to the fact that there was a CREATOR of this engine. Why not just say "Ford motor company engines is a product of natural selection" also.
I heard about this from that intelligent design vs evolution court case.. The intelligent design people were arguing it had to be designed because of how intricately dependent every individual part is on each other, so if you remove a single part it completely stops working. But the evolution side showed that similar structures with missing parts were also being used by bacteria, except for completely different purposes. It's like the mouse trap example - if even a single part is removed it no longer functions as a mouse trap, but you only need 2-3 of the original parts for it to still work as a tie clip
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District is the name of the case
Part of the argument that's intelligent design used against Evolution was that several of the parts that make up this motor are not found in any other living creature therefore it's not like a hair becoming a feather. Furthermore the development of this motor is from the inside out and that also makes it extremely improbable then this little motor evolved.
The view to see the cell as a machine with parts that have single functions is also an oversimplification. There are many proteins that are not solid, have different shapes and many different functions in a cell. Which in my opinion makes it even a bigger of a mystery how all these interesting things can emerge out of jiggly strings and blobs made of amino acids. I like your story above, however I think it just makes sense of where the single parts (proteins) might have come from. Not how the organism came to be and how it can function.
@@LarryStonster Hairs never became feathers. Feathers are an adaption of the process that creates scales.
Creationists have argued that tons of structures were irreducibly complex and for almost all of them we have found them to be plenty complex but highly reducable.
Feather ironically being one of them.
It's just god of the gaps with a more scientifically interesting gap.
@@LarryStonster they are found all over. It's a lie, both in modern evo terms and in sub-components of other parts in the cell walls.
Someone already mentioned that the reason its so efficient is friction, heat and physics works differently at the molecular level.
😂 everything is at a molecular level
@@YourCommonSinner 3IQ comment
Life uses the microscopic and quantum world very efficiently. It's ridiculously cool.
@@YourCommonSinner no
@@xthesayuri5756 whether you like it or not molecules are everywhere interacting and reacting with one another. Just cause you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I have a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology. Let me say this: you did an incredible job describing so many complex ideas. Simply amazing!
I am NOT a phd in anything including cell biology or molecules. I am but a lowly mechanical technician who just took a course on industrial electricity. What I am seeing here is a reversible electric motor complete with gears, races, shaft, bearings, variable speed transmission, and mated parts like rotors and stators that have to fit perfectly into each other for any of it to function. Come on. Surely this is a designed system. How on earth would these individual components be formed as part of other evolved systems in the precise measurements / dimensions required to somehow all be brought together all at once and create this functioning apparatus? I am not religious. I believe in evolution. I also have eyes and believe what I see and appear to be seeing a designed device. Has anybody identified the individual components and specified where they were created independently?
@@tyharris9994 Evolution is algorithm which best case solution spread to next generation trying to find what it's more advantageous using things already there. It's so powerful that computers scientists designed one of the most powerful AI algorithm, genetic algorithm. Biomimetics covers a lot of that and we could use more
@@tyharris9994 Billions and billions of years of trial and error, complex life forms did not emerge overnight. It seems to me that even very intelligent people often forget this fact.
@@tyharris9994That's exactly what evolution is. It takes so long and so, so, so many iterations of selection. Bacteria that developed prototype of with very weak of motility from random chance ends up surving much better than others, and ones that mutates a more updated version that works a bit better, survives a bit better and outcompetes it's older generation. These bacteria doubles like veery thirty minutes (in log phase) , and think of how long they have existed. This kind of bacteria has evolved from the first prototype of motility to what it has now, like a rocket from Mark 1 to Mark 6, it is Mark 1 to Mark whatever trillions for these bacteria. It is a long time and by chance and how it optimizes their survival in a harsh world out here.
Because it didn't start out that way. You're looking at version 50 trillion of it, and ignoring all the versions that led to its development and which were superceded by a better version that came later, outcompeted, and replaced it.
Absolutely superb!! Thank you for this❤
The implications of this are infinite in explaining so many many many things that remain mysteries!
As a chemist, molecular biololgy blows my mind away, we struggle to synthezise a 30 atom molecule while every living thing constantly produces insanely complex and biomechanically working supra molecules all the time. The DNA replicating complex is an equally fascinating example
Absolutely incredible what millions of years of random non-directional mutations can come up with.
Makes me feel like most of the fancy technologies humans developed in the past thousand years are just macro versions of what had been under development for a billion years, just on a smaller length scale. We're all possible because of replicable and evolvable instructions encoded in DNA and RNA. Despite all our fancy tools we've created using language and sharing of blueprints of useful tools, we're only just now scratching the surface for self-replicating and self-improving tools. I'd imagine we'd see another huge shift in society, like we've seen during the industrial revolution, as we develop tools that become better suited to pre-defined tasks over time and make its own improved copies the way all living things do to survive on the cellular level.
It makes a lot of sense though, we're using big honking machines expending a lot of energy to try and control all the parameters required to assemble nanoscopic structures while cells have all the nanoscopic tools in-house to do the same with less energy than a tiny LED.
We're cutting a tiny paper snowflake garland with garden shears while cells use scissors.
@@AffordBindEquipmentActually, it's been mathematically proven that "random mutations" could produce such results, as only 1 in 10^-77 "random mutations" can produce just 1 viable mutation - and even the probability of that being a beneficial m is mutation is almost as unlikely. Hard to believe anyone can dispute intelligent design, at this point. How difficult it must be to ignore the evidence if intelligent design at Every Turn. I can only imagine the level of narcissism and denial - the sheer amount of willpower it must take to dispute the obvious... Imagine where we could be as a society if all that effort denying and protesting the obvious was directed in a positive direction. Sad.
@@AffordBindEquipment😅
I'm an experienced engineer and I think I understand how things work more or less well, but since I started studying microbiology, my mind has exploded! A new world has opened up, a world of ultra-efficient, super miniaturized and extremely complex machines!
But , it just happened by accident. 😂😂😂
@@Heracles_FE No. They happened by magic, r8?
@@itabiritomg Hi, biologist here. The machine analogy is used too much. Biological "machines" are thermodynamically driven. They aren't mechanical devices. That is - their movements are actually nothing but random thermal vibration of molecules, just biased in a specific way to make a consistent movement. For example - the gear protein that makes the flagellar motor move, doesn't do any gearing at all. It just supplies hydrogen ions to it in a specific direction.
Secondly, I want to emphasize that these 'mchines' aren't that efficient either. For example - flagellar motion works with
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 OK buddy , we couldn't build one that spins that fast smaller than a refrigerator, but you know , time and chance and all ... 🤡
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 When we say machine, we didn't strictly mean a rigid mechanism. A machine is just any device that can use energy to perform work in order to achieve a function. These flagellar motors certainly fit in that description and they are still extremely incredible and wonderful.
I love it when research scientists on the cutting edge of their field are able to communicate their topic in simple terms
If you can't break it down in simple terms, you might not understand it deeply
@@theultimatereductionist7592 he said "Might" so he is technicaly correct :P
Exactly. I tell my students that they should describe a process or phenomenon in terms that their quite smart grandparent, who is not embedded in the jargon, what is going on both accurately and succinctly. That's when they know they actually understand something.
Youre an ass@@theultimatereductionist7592
@@theultimatereductionist7592 No! Mastermind is correct. The proof for the poincare conjecture is PAGES long, but can you explain it in simple terms to a 5 year old such that they get the idea of what it proves? Absolutely! If you cannot explain it in simple terms, you do not fully understand it, q.e.d.
قُلِ انظُرُواْ مَاذَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأَرْضِ وَمَا تُغْنِي الآيَاتُ وَالنُّذُرُ عَن قَوْمٍ لَّا يُؤْمِنُونَ
Hi,
I previously worked as a biochemist and can shed some light on the process of "fitting proteins onto a location of the flagellum motor" mentioned around 22:18.
Each protein is basically a string of amino-acids which is folded in a certain way, partially by physical or electrochemical properties of the amino-acid, sometimes by use of enzymes. When you unwind a protein its possible to sequence the amino acid revealing what the string looks like.
When you combine the length of a protein string with each amino acid property you can for a large part predict where and how it folds in on itself. This means that once you sequence a handful of proteins that together make the flagellum motor complex it in theory is quite straightforward to puzzle the pieces into its respective locations based on the predicted "form" that the protein string would take.
Yes, the video skipped rather quickly over that part, or at least didn't go into a lot of detail. The thing is, in order to make all the copies of the motor, what they must have done is to isolate the genetic sequence which is the blueprint for the motor from Salmonella, then injected that sequence into E. Coli in order to have it make lots of copies of the motor. So they should already know the amino acid sequences involved, which should make it much easier to map the whole thing.
This prediction is by no means simple or straightforward, hence for many years we've had the computer program Folding At Home, which continues to run to this day even with incredible computing power applied to the protein folding problem/solutions, the solutions are still being calculated and found. There are seemingly near infinite possibilities.
Texts video to buddy. Buddy: “Oh, Destin is into crochet. Good for him.”
Crochet was the first thing that popped into my head!
As an airline pilot, I had a guest in the flight deck one day (back when we could do that) who was a molecular biologist researcher at a local university. He expressed wonder at the complexities of our flight deck and aircraft. I remarked that what he worked on every day must be a thousand times more complex! We were both in wonder and awe of these things that we humans (in the case of an aircraft) and ??? (you fill in the blank) have made in the cellular structures!! I love your encouragement here to "Not defend a flag," but just look and ponder!... Thanks for all this - it is so absolutely amazing!
happy 300! - 300 thanks! - keep up the good work. engcouraging enticing engaging videos are key to our evolution and broad knowledge
8:05 A shame that Destin interrupted him here, but I found some research that explains the fascinating research: Bacteria moves in a run-and-tumble pattern. During a run, they go straight and the flagella and "motor" goes counterclockwise. During a tumble the bacteria tumbles and shifts direction. Now of course the tumble will be random, but you can still archive a route towards food with this randomness. What the bacteria does is that when it detects an increase in concentration of the food they have longer run periods so they will continue mostly in that direction, however when it detects a shift towards lower concentrations it does the opposite and increases tumble time to change direction. This will of course result in a sum movement towards the food. Amazing.
I feel he's always trying to impress whoever he's talking to with his own engineering knowledge, they are the experts just let them explain it.
@@gama1123He isn't trying to impress. He's trying to be active in the discussion and relate it to other things that viewers might be able to draw connections. There's not much point to him sitting there and having the person talking the entire time. You can watch lectures if you don't want dialogue.
@@ggs4989 ok
I understood that from the video... i dont remember if he interrupted but the information got to my head so i really dont think whatever he did stopped the communication of that idea at all. maybe you just didn't get it the way it was worded.
I think I understood what you just said from the video.
Structural biologist here. Pretty good job explaining how it works. On the question how we know where what goes: sometimes you can see the start of a chain, and we know how long each amino acid is, so it is just a matter of fitting them one by one.
Please don't underrate what must be a challenging and rewarding science! I, for one, am impressed!
@@dj-kq4fz I don’t think this is underrating but a good explanation of how microbiologists do the find and fit of protein molecules. Great explanation. Basically a 3d jigsaw where you might only know what one corner looks like.
I waited 50 yrs for this. I remember back a few years when they discovered the tail rotated by holding the tail then the body rotated. They always thought the tail whipped back and forth. The science of micro biology is impressive.
@@GodzillaGoesGaga Exactly. The blue mesh visible in the program around minute 23 is a representation of the experimental data; we can see structures on the atomic level! Working with these results and trying to model the protein is a very cool job. And I never said it was easy ;)
@pentachronic like a 3d jjigsaw puzzle where the pieces are floppy/sticky/springy chains, and there are 5000 wrong pieces in the pile.
One of my favorite things is when Destin speaks with someone who is very knowledgeable and passionate, you can tell they want to geek out over the topic, but they question how smart this UA-camr actually is. And then without fail in his videos, Destin will show how smart he is, and the expert perks up and the vibe of the video changes immediately.
Yes, that struck me too, how he quickly related the biased random walk of the bacteria to his own work on using biased dithering of the control fins to improve the accuracy of guided missiles. Then Prash had an 'Oh yes' moment. Prash also had an intuitive feel for how much detail the audience could handle. Nicely done by both guys.
Watch to the end. He demonstrates how indoctrinated and gullible he is.
@@JiveDadson Destin is the very much the opposite of gullible. He uses his knowledge and communication skills to breakdown complicated things and explains them to others so they can be knowledgeable as well. He urges people to think critically. If Destin wishes to think god created these things then so be it, I might not agree with him. But my opinion holds just as much weight as his does.
Destin very cleverly sort-of acts dumb and teases information out so the experts have to explain things so we ordinary mortals to understand (apologies any non-ordinary mortals reading this!).
I am a Veterinarian in clinical Medicine we see these motile components as an Intetinal protozoa;The life cycle of Giardia alternates between two distinct developmental stages: a motile, replicating trophozoite stage in the small intestine of the dogs, and a non-motile, transmissible cyst stage.
“The implications for a bio mechanical motor are insane “
Every cell in my body right now converting ATP into ADP: Bruh…really?
My thought exactly!
fax
I suspect this guy's view of the physical world isn't based solely on science.
@@YouAreStillNotablaze Why would it be? It's impossible to operate based on facts alone.
well the motor thing converts ADP into ATP, but yes, every cell also converts ATP to ADP
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
If the puddle had an OS, sensors, actuators and feedback- then the puddle would be wise to consider that.
The flagella isn't a puddle and you aren't either..
@@chiefpacman If you are proposing one of more gods as an explanation, understand that you have to provide a mechanism that sufficiently explains where gods come from, what creates them and what gives them their characteristics, BEFORE you offer it as an explanation for more simpler and humble things as the flagella.
Otherwise your argument is that bacteria are more amazing than your god(s) since the flagella requires an explanation, but your suspiciously anthropomorphic god(s) don't.
@@chiefpacman A person is a puddle that can stand on their hind legs.
Obvious just means it seems right to most of us…I’d say the puddle waking up one morning is where we all obviously say…dayum!
@@chiefpacman Aren't creationists, by thinking they can decide whether something is "complex enough" to be called evidence of creation, also indirectly saying they have the capacity to "measure" god? Isn't that hubristic and against major concepts in their faith?
I'm a mechanical engineer and one of my best friends is a bio guy (he has like two Master's degrees and is pursuing a PhD--he's wicked smart). When we lived together he would oftentimes find papers of the mechanics of microorganisms and show me the kind of "engineering" that has already been used in biology. Really cool stuff
By an intelligent creator YHVH God.
@@AndrewFosterSheff69 except there no evidence of a creator and plenty evidence that contradicts the hypothesis of intelligent design in biology. Religion is toxic to humanity.
Lol my boy here is wicked smart. Sounds so cool in a Sothie accent
@@AndrewFosterSheff69 lol, no
@@AndrewFosterSheff69your God, right? Not that evil Allah guy
You do realise that this motor is The Icon of the Intelligent Design movement. They just got there about 20 years ago.
"A motor made out of molecules." -- I'd be more impressed by a motor that WASN'T made out of molecules.
A correct way of putting it will be "A motor made out of proteins"
Metal isn't made out of molecules, it's made out of atoms stripped from their valence electrons and a shared cloud of electrons. So no molecules there.
@@yys6102 molecular-scale motor
I would be more impressed if the bacteria didn't have any way of locomotion but it would still move around. You know, like by invisible magic, in a supernatural way. Now it's just same old physical thing like all other methods of locomotion and movement are too.
@@capricornuss True, but it would be hard to make a motor with no molecular content. Even discounting various parts and lubrication, the fuel is molecular. Even if you powered it with a non-molecular fuel, the oxidizer would be molecular O2. You'd have to find a complete fuel made entirely of somewhat-stable singlets.
I love when two different subject matter experts get together and geek over each other’s discoveries/ inventions. It’s truly profound.
I don't love how he uses the word design instead of evolve.
@@phiiz3r we can do this, but let’s be civil.
Neo-Darwinism is unproven and not observable. The hypotheses have gone unproven and are near untestable. Logically then, how can you believe in the neodarwinist understanding of evolution with no evidence? Don’t confuse adaption with random mutation.
But I’m baffled how someone can look at a molecular two way motor made of amino acids that is perfectly designed and go, “yeah, intelligence didn’t create that.”
Furthermore It’s unwise to think science and theism (in my case Christianity) are at odds. Science is how we understand God’s creation. The pioneers of the scientific method did so with the belief that God created the universe in a way we can understand if we look hard enough.
The host is a smart guy and no doubt an SME in his field but he's not an SME in structural or evolutionary biology. He is a great explainer and did a good job of covering a lot of the salient information but nowhere close to an SME level of detail.
@@phiiz3r well… I did reply with a solid argument but UA-cam blackholed my comment. Gotta love censorship.
@@phiiz3r Evolution is a design process, just not an intelligently directed one
The bacteria knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't
Underrated comment
It knows this because it knows where it isn't.
By subtractinf where it is from where it isn't or where it isn't from where it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a "difference" or "deviation".
Except it doesn't "know" anything. There is simply a stimulus from a direction that triggers a cascade of reactions to move towards or away from that.
Dithering is actually a great analogy for evolution. When the bacteria doesn't need to move (evolve) it stays relatively still. When it does need to move it moves in random direction. It is improbable that it would go back to the start, but there is no "forward".
😅
just loved it when you mentioned it being your 300th episode. well done keep up the good work!
I’m studying molecular biology: it’s so so so cool that you have started covering these topics, I find biology to be one of the most fascinating parts of the universe
69 likes.
Nice 😎
Considering we could only be studying it because of molecular biology, it certainly seems like we *ought* to be fascinated by it.
@@texvanwinkleyou can say that for any discipline...
Life amazes at every turn
Biology is fascinating, but the most fascinating part of the Universe is definitely Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics
Prashant's passion for his work is incredible, love to see how excited he is about discovering things.
Heck yeah, I'm glad we have academics working on stuff like this. I hope they are rewarded for the sake of the science, not because some company wants to monetize it, corrupting the otherwise natural process of continued discovery
The first 5 minutes of this video alone are mind blowing. Prashant is clearly a smart guy but the engineering translation you provided really helped me see how that all works. Awesome video!!
Man I am electronics engineering dropout, currently working in ERP Industry for automation of accounts. I am very proud that people like you exist who treat science like a poetry and every branch of science like a art that can be converted into fusion
क्या जुगलबंदी है आपकी मेकेनिकल इंजीनियरिंग और बायोकेमिस्ट्री वाह मजा आ गया
Everyone: Going off about how cool the flagellar motor is.
ATP Synthase: Am I a joke to you?!?!?
Micro-tubules inside neurons using quantum entanglement to transfer information are cooly filing their nails and looking unimpressed.
@@tyharris9994
That is not supported by evidence. It is pure speculation and since entanglement is short term even at near zero K it is simply not likely. Microtubules have a real know function. Structural. I am sorry but it is exceedingly like that Dr Penrose is wrong on this.
It's also interesting how that motor uses photons too
The thing is, calling a biomechanical motor “complicated” is strange based on everything else we know about life.
A brain is complicated. The immune system is complicsted. An entire organism working in unison is complicated. A little motor feels like the least wild thing about life.
Put another way, inventing the steam engine is pretty cool, but humanity being able to globally communicate, innovate, and utilize that steam engine is even more crazy. The steam engine is simple in comparison.
Exactly.. everything that have evolved over a billion yr is "complex" .. but that's after a billion yr of evolution. It's like coming to a built house and being amazed that such a thing could just exist.
We know the mechanisms of evolution.. it's not a mystery.
This is litteraly the argument of religious zealots in 2007, they used the flagella and the eye as evidence for a creator. It was called intelligent design and was debated to death on yt in 2007-08 between atheists and religious ppl... ppl may remember thunderfoot and venomfangx.
Agreed, but I suspect that Destin is a bit of a creationist/intelligent design believer, and they tend to have a certain way of perceiving things like this.
I agree with you, but I also want to point out that the fact that a biomechanical motor is "simple" in terms of nature's complexity is extremely awesome and telling.
@@phasmata3813 It's true. It makes me a bit sad. Like complexity exists everywhere. It only seems special here because you didn't expect it here, and there it is. So now this is the proof that god exists? I am not so sure
I think the interesting question is how you get there. There is a pretty obvious line from a single nerve connecting a sensor and a muscle over one more nerve next to it, to a whole bundle of nerves that make up a brain.
To stick to your analogy: Figuring out how to talk to your neighbor, organising into a group, figuring out how to talk to other groups - that's a relatively straight forward process. But putting together all the principles needed to make a steam engine at once is a whole different beast.
I love how happy he is doing his job and relating it to his dad/grandad and how fresh and exciting they both make this content feel
Praise the Designer
@@souhaibtouati9330 amen brother
Imagine being Destin's great-grandchild. You've heard loads about great-granpappy, but different from prior generations, you actually have access to 300+ videos of him sharing his enthusiasm for the world. Isn't this a great time to be alive?
The best thing is that as a great-grandchild of someone, you'll soon typically even be able to find a _reincarnation_ of such an ancestor who already is again alive.
minus the fallacious agrgument for god this is probably true
@@JK-gm1ek Agree completely. He came so close to saying "irreducible complexity" I could almost see ProfessorDaveExplains's spider-sense tingling
The number of biologists in the comment section is already considerable! But I have to say that as a microbiologist, I find Destin's excitement and surprise about the elegance of biological systems so heartwarming and satisfying!
I am a retired bio engineer. The lab that I worked in for over half of my 74 years studied the molecular structure of cardiac muscle cells. The contraction of these muscle cells is driven by gradients of several different ions, much like the flagellar motors. There are ion channels that open to allow ions to flow into the cell to cause contraction and then there are ion pumps that are used to re-establish the gradients to allow the cell to relax.
So my question is this, if these molecular motors are driven by the gradient of hydrogen ions, have the ion pumps, that must exist, been studied that regulate the ionic gradient? Thanks for a wonderful discussion!
Yes, the proton pump exist and involve in sooooo many cases like in your stomach to keep the pH at low level, and it has also been studied for decades 😉
Is a fascinating topic but based on studies in evolutionary biology, it’s thought to have taken tens - hundreds of millions of years, as it likely evolved gradually through a process of co-option and modification of pre-existing protein systems.
The flagellar motor is believed to have evolved from simpler systems like the Type III secretion system (T3SS) or related structures.
The evolutionary process involved repurposing proteins for new functions, which is consistent with Darwinian evolution.
I don't know if I'm alone in not being that surprised such a thing can evolve. The human vision system is incredibly complex but I can still imagine the steps of going from one single photoreceptor, to multiple, to a transparent membrane in front and so on. There are millions of undocumented bacterial species out there and there are almost certainly intermediate steps of this motor that we just have not yet discovered.
One of the biggest nails in the "watchmaker" argument (about irreducible complexity) in my view is the fact that our eyes are inside out. The rods and cones point backwards, and the nerves trail from them, over our retina, then bunch up at our blind spot and then go into the optic nerve. As a design, it's imbecillic, but thinking about how we would have gone from photo-sensitive cells, to a big grouping of them, to a specialised organ with it's own vitreous humour, it makes a lot more sense.
You know whose eyes AREN'T inside out? Octopii. Weird that celaphods have right-side out eyes when no vertebrates do.
@@matthiasoc7141sure, but I think the biggest nail in the watchmaker argument is that we know for a fact that the watch is made by humans as all the evidence points towards it, and we have no examples or evidence that it can occur naturally. All the evidence, however, points to these microscopic motors in the video being formed naturally and there is no evidence to suggest that it was intentionally created by some mind or being. All the go on is “look how complex it is! I can’t explain it, so it must have been created!”.
I think the time scales involved alone make a compelling argument. I doubt we'd be able to tell how long the flagellum was around in an unicellular life, so it might be a "recent" invention. Bacteria were around two times longer than the concept of _plants,_ and the bacteria go through the evolution motions crazy fast.
And critically, pointing out that complex systems can evolve by themselves is not "waving a flag for one side", it's evidenced. The whole "this is so complex it must have been engineered" argument is....frustrating.
@@rockindude3001 But yet.....accurate. The only system that is believed to have evolved purely without a designer is the most complex system of all - life. No other system known to man has developed this way, and no one is making claims of such. They would be laughed out of the room if they did. The true illogic is to live in a world conquered and ruled by intelligent beings designing complex systems that fall apart when left to chance, yet believing that systems orders of magnitude more complex could have come about by chance.
"The bacteria knows where it is at all times because it knows where it isnt" is all Destin needed to say to complete the missile analogy.
"Oh yes, this is the best part!" Gotta love that kind of drive, to be excited about months of meticulous matching and analyzing because it means answers and discovery.
Awesome to see such a clearly mechanically minded/engineering minded person explain the subject I love. Thanks as always, Desmond!!
The first time I saw the flagellar motor I was staggered - i have never forgotten it. Later I stumbled onto an animation of kinesin protein walking on a micro-tubule and was just as floored. The molecular machinery of life is mind blowing and I LOVE IT :D
Both are miraculous!
It's designed. There is no explanation that random mutations could have created it
@@kenfryer2090 Yep. A great example of irreducible complexity (Michael Behe). It has more than 30 necessary parts, and doesn't work at all without any one of them. The odds of that forming by random are so astronomical that finding one specific atom in the universe would look simple by comparison.
@@kenfryer2090 this is fully explained without the use of magic. There are numerous papers detailing it including one Destin himself posted here.
@@daveduncan2748 irreducible complexity has never been demonstrated and Behe is a conman. Evolution by natural selection is not random.
If you take a uni level intro to evolutionary bio, it opens your mind up to how all this could come to be naturally. Each piece in the motor could be used as a piece to a simpler biological machine. Millions of machines get made by each cell, some work as intended, some are misshapen, others are different in some way, and that is what selective pressures work on.
Yeah, it sounded like he was trying to imply that God must have created it because it's too complicated to spawn on it's own :/ That's like a Sunday school level fallacy you don't normally encounter from science UA-camrs.
@@y29k15 You can almost call the small chance of such things appearing "God"
And that is in a single cell. 1% of our weight is non-human (bacteria, fungi...) and that 1% makes up MORE cells than human cells in a single person. In the planet, there are quadrillions of cells doing trial and error. Every. Second. For thousands x thousands x thousands of years. The scale is *unimaginable*. Perhaps that is another way to see in a spiritual/religious way. Afterall, data doesn't mean we can imagine, and lots of quantum mechanics are purely philosophical (its first proposal was Schrodinger's Cat), but don't misunderstand me, I am not saying this is a religious matter. Just saying that if you are to be inspired spiritually, then better be by an astronomical scale. Simply unimaginable. Like, broken, even.
Irreducible complexity
I would completely disagree. It gives ZERO explanation, far less a theoretical one. Evolution does not have foresight. There is no evolutionary pressure to create the parts to a cellular mechanism that doesn't exist yet. Evolution is and always has been pseudo science. The only real world examples of evolution are reductive evolution aka degradation of genetics giving a benefit like antibiotic resistant bacteria or the long term ecoli experiment.
Should have called the second channel, “Smarter Every Other Day”.
Or "Smarter Than Yesterday"
Smarter Every Night
Smarterer Every Day
Even Smarter Every Day
Smarter Every Day except the Sabbath
I didn't expect this video to be so awesome. Talking directly with the researchers is gold.
They are doing such a great job. I wish they would get more funding (take it from military for instance...).
I respect this man's credentials as a biologist. I respect this other man as an engineer. As a PC gamer, get your fingers off the monitor!
I was triggered by him touching the monitor as well..ha. Then you get annoying smears visible on dark portions.
Who’s gonna tell them about touchscreens?
@@thatcringyplaneguy Not me! I try to refrain from trying to teach people who think they already know everything.
@@josorr “get smart people in your life who love you enough to smile and tell you you’re wrong.” - Destin Sandlin
@@thatcringyplaneguy 1. Touchscreens are not immune to finger smudges 2. It looks like an LG Ultrawide monitor back there, they don't come with touchscreen. 3. It's joke guy, chill out.
I stumbled upon those motors around 1996: there was a small section about them in the university textbook Brock´s _Biology of Microorganisms_ . To this day I remember the drawing of the motor components, very similar but not as detailed as those shown in the video. I was amazed upon learning about the flagellar motors, but even more amazed because the general public and the media seem to ignore them completely.
Another interesting fact: The proteins that made up the flagellum are produced inside the cell and "pumped" through the motor hollow core; then they self-assemble to build the flagellum, which is a hollow and flexible tube that grows up from its tip.
I have enjoyed very much this video showing the current status of science knowledge about this topic.
Actually, this mechanism isn't ignored, it was a key part on banning intelligent design from public schools
@@pedro4205huh?
So what you're saying is that flagella are rotating self assembling inflatable tubemen? Fascinating!
great explaination, love it
@@emonvidaly Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Basically some clowns in a school district wanted to teach intelligent design and brought forward flagellar motors, then proceeded to get destroyed so thoroughly that they resorted to one of their favorite tactics: death threats, before basically giving up and paying about 1 million in legal fees.
ATP synthase makes us all tick, you should look at this enzyme too!
I was also going to mention ATP synthase too.
Yeah! I’m curious what the similarities and differences are.
He mentioned the protein that works like a needle and I wonder if these 3 structures are built with the same amino acids or if they’re a case of several different amino acid combinations converging to a similar shape.
Oh the Fo and F1 domains with PMF...there's so much interesting in it!!!
the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell 🗣️📢💥🔥🔥
I love ATP Synthase too!
You are inspiring! I’m 52 years old and I wish I would have been exposed to your insatiable curiosity at a much younger and formative age bc I believe it would have given me the courage to pursue a different career. You make nerding out so cool and your thirst for knowledge is infectious. The effort and time you put into producing easy to digest content is admirable and a true gift to society. Thank you! 🙏
Excuse me while I engineerify your biology.🤣
biology IS chemical engineering
*biomedical engineering
Wouldn't "his biology" be autobiological? Which would make SED's reason (aka MO) to do that a matter of... auto-motive engineerifying?
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Well, engineers are an outcome of evolution xD. Evolution has no limit on complexity. The only thing that matters for evolution is that it works reliably. If that's a super complex structure on top of another, fused with a third one, combine it with neural networks and many neural networks form a social structure together where ideas evolve to a point where engineering is born - then that's extremely hyper mega complex - but it works. And that's the *only* thing that matter for evolution.
Prashant seems like such an awesome person. Thanks for doing this interview, inviting him to share the fascinating science that he apparently gets so much satisfaction by advancing.
I ❤ listening to scientists like this; it's a unique joy of being human.
20:30 He’s talking about photogrammetry!!! This process is AMAZING!!! Dustin, you got to make a video about this!!!!
I love when you meet a guy like prosh who is not just brilliant, but also can explain what he knows in layman's terms
I remember my AP bio teacher back in high school casually mention "proton pumps" in class one day and having the same kind of "wait, WHAT?" reaction.
yes, I remember a very similar structure that is in your stomach cells that is used to make the acid in your stomach. There probably are many similar mechanisms in various cells, nothing unique here.
What's even crazier is that just like the doubled walled bacteria in the video, the mitochondria (Powerhouse of the Cell!) in our cells have doubles walls and utilize proton pumps to create a gradient. That gradient is how they recharge ADP into ATP, the "batteries" that power all cellular functions.
They may seem 'sciency' but they're incredibly commonplace. If you taste something sour, that's protons.
Just learned about ATP and proton gradient last week. And now this. Animation helps for sure. We are not just machines, we are fantastic machines.
@@philm7758 that is actually a well-accepted hypothesis on evolution: organisms with mitochondria came to be by "swallowing" organisms which were the ancestors of these bacteria, and then, by chance, they did not digested it and instead both organisms integrated themselves together, then evolved together by natural selection, and the inner organism lost its independence but gained a safe environment. This also explains why mitochondria have their own DNA separated from the host cells. In humans, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother. This fact was used to map the DNA of the people in my country and prove the hypothesis that none of the first mothers of my people were white (in other words, the obvious: the ships of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers had no women)
The big TEM ( transmission electron microscope ) is called Titan, the smaller one Talos. Production and development is done in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. ThermoFisher acquired the company 9 years ago. It was then called FEI, which is also an American company, HQ in Hilsboro, Oregon. FEI acquired 30 years ago the company from Philips. Hundred years ago, Philips was vertically integrated. They made everything themselves, including the measurement systems. The spin offs ( ASML and Electron microscopes ) were more successful than the mother company.
Electron microscopy is 100 years old but it made huge progress during the last 20 years thanks to cryo technology, image software, mechatronics and image sensors but above all because of the vision and guts from individuals like D.H.
Truly amazing technology.
Seems like you may be a fellow Thermo FSE.... not sure how much of that history is on the internet.
@@flipvansaksen774 wow fun history lesson! I'll take your word for it...... I wouldn't trust it if it was AI generated
What's a "D.H."?
@@joshmartin2744these are the initials of the name of that person. I have known him in person. He unfortunately passed away during a business trip. He was the one who made it happen and created the cryo-TEM business. The technology was so difficult that most people didn’t want to take the risk. He did.
@@JMartinhomestead😊 indeed, i was…
Honestly, the fact that microbes have molecular "machinery" to which our own technology bears a coincidental resemblance strikes me as less of an indication that bacteria are unbelievably complex, and more an indication that our technology is extremely simple.
To be fair the coincidence isn't really a coincidence, with the tools and building materials you have there is only so many things you can do to achieve a result, the varions wont be endless at all. A motor will look like a motor at any scale built by any technology, its just how our reality and physics work.
As for complexity, yes our tech is extremely simple, we can just make metal things and bend the metal as we want, cells need to assemble structures atom by atom and those don't want to play ball, they have specific rules on what they can and cant bind to and those binds have angles and rules of their own... to create a simple shape for us in wood or metal is super simple compared, it takes absurdly complexity as you need protein to fold and fold and fold and fold like origami, until an end result is achieved, to what would otherwise be a simple shape.
One thing I really like to think about in terms of how simple what we do is, and yet we think is soooo advanced, is medicine. 99% of our wonderful super high tech medicine... isn't. Its just removing an obstacle and letting the body do its thing. Its purely supporting the body, its not actually doing anything on its own. The body heals, fights the bacteria, repairs, regrows, cleans up etc. We aren't doing any of that with medicine, all we are doing is buying the body enough time to "win" the war, or give it the means to know the enemy beforehand so is prepared, or physically moving things around and putting them together or further apart, which the body couldnt do on its own.
The only thing really that isn't like that is surgery, where we directly interfere, the rest? its all just support and buying time/preventing death while letting the body do the bulk of the work.
So id say by any standard, our medicine is extremily primitive and hasnt advanced that much, we were doing fairly advanced surgery 5000 years ago (brain surgery level of advanced).
Most advances have been in the field of purification of compounds, and being able to not rely on plants and finding and synthetizing new, novel ones, but its still supportive, and mostly better versions of what already exists in nature
Calling technology simple is oversimplifying it.
Like the simple act of wartching this video on a phone required countless discoveries and experiments to happen. There are no other creature, living or extinct, that are able to communicate using radio waves. Like 0. None.
Turning information to radio waves, transmitting it, receiving it and decoding it is all humans. By radio waves I mean Wifi, bluetooth, Cellular signal, GPS etc.
@@typhvam5107 Perhaps an example of convergent evolution? What has evolved in microbiology has also evolved in our own development of human technology.
@@lifelonglearner56 Pretty much, is what drives it really, theres only so many solutions to a problem, anything finding one will be similar. The chemical aspects might differ a bit, but a resonance chamber has to be a resonance chamber sort of thing.
@@typhvam5107 I would say that it's pretty definitionally a coincidence. Our designs coincide with bacterial structures, we didn't invent the boat propeller by looking at flagella.
Excellent presentation and clear explanation….so well done that even this farmer understands it. Brilliant