Invisible Elegance

Well, in truth it's not literally invisible, but essentially is for all practical purposes. Even for the least scientifically minded among you, I would highly recommend you take a few moments to watch the following animation. Make sure your speakers are turned on because the video is accompanied by a soundtrack that is stirring in its application, if not somewhat irksome for its use of synthesized instruments.

http://aimediaserver4.com/studiodaily/videoplayer/?src=ai4/harvard/harvard.swf&width=640&height=520

This particular sequence seems to be focusing on the workings within a typical leukocyte (white blood cell), yet let it not be forgotten that this bewildering array of activity is occurring incessantly in each of the ten trillion cells that form the sinews with which your body is knit together. The activities being portrayed are as accurate to our current understanding of cellular machinery as any I've ever seen and in brilliant colour and dimension nonetheless. The unfortunate disadvantage most of us meet in the modern biology classroom is the sterile, 2-D world of the textbook from which the inner life of the cell seems as stuffy and uneventful as the pages from which we read. However, there exists a stunning elegance in the "simplest" form of life that we have only just begun to understand. Far from being a gelatinous bag of protoplasm is the cell, rather it is a microcosm of even our greatest cities, complete with power plants, markets, libraries, production lines, and mass transit. My particular favorite is the scene in which DNA is spliced in preparation to create mRNA (the process of which is not shown in its entirety) which is then united with a ribosome beyond the nuclear envelope to produce the proteins that keep the cell alive. The video ends with the leukocyte migrating from a capillary to intercellular space in response to the identification of a foreign body. A simple action really, but one built upon marvelous complexity, and upon which we depend upon with our very lives.

Very rarely do I have the happenstance to meet someone else who shares my rapt fascination with cellular biology, so my hope is that in watching this video you will possibly share in some of the wonder.