fantastic vesicle traffic

The miracle of life relies in its cells.
The root hair is one of the fastest growing cells in the plant. To allow this rapid growth, continuous delivery of membrane and cell wall material to the growing tip of the hair cell is required. A component part of this material is protein, which is synthesized by ribosomes along the Endoplasmic Reticulum, modified in the Golgi apparatus and packaged into vesicles. The vesicles are finally delivered to the plasma membrane by motor proteins along the cytoskeleton. How do vesicles find their target membranes? The specificity of target recognition is mediated by the interaction of v-SNARE proteins on the vesicle surface with t-SNARE proteins on the target membrane. Among others, small G-proteins regulate this process. One group of small G-proteins is the so-called RabGTPases.
To visualize the distribution of such RabGTPase proteins within the cell, they are tagged with the Green Fluorescent Protein. The video shows the germination of Arabidopsis thaliana seeds, zooming in on the root hairs, which display movement of fluorescent vesicles through the cytoplasm, and finally one can see an animation of myosin VI motor proteins dragging the fluorescently marked vesicles along actin filaments.


This video is part of the videocontest at http://www.chlorofilms.org

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ChloroFilms
• vesicle
• traffic
• rab
• actin
• myosin
• time
• lapse
• animation
• arabidopsis
• root
• hair

[Scofield0085]

Motor proteins are badass.

[jmm1233]

they are so cute

[Deathwingthedragon]

Even Dragons are fascinated by...

SCIENCE! 

[DrFunderful]

fucking fantastic =)

[DomakChard]

"Also the DNA system has a spell check mechanism, which corrects errors thus hindering evolution."

This is a fault of perspective. The DNA checking mechanism is a result of evolution because it better allows for successful reproduction. It is not flawless, and mutations still occur.

Flies demonstrate how simple it can be to make radical physiological changes with genetics. Scientists these days can easily change a couple genes around and a fly's leg will grow out of it's eye socket (and more)

[DomakChard]

Dating of a meteor believed to have formed about the same time as the Earth has put Earth's age at 4.5 billion years.

@RespectMyHate

Your jab at scientists frequently claiming to know the Earth's age is incorrect. There were uninformed estimations in the past, but no one claimed them to be definite. We now KNOW that radiometric dating works, because it has been crossed checked countless times a proven to be consistent by various other dating techniques.

[DomakChard]

@alarikmarcus

One small fault in what you're saying. Radiocarbon dating is not how the Earth's age is known. Carbon dating can only be used back about 50,000 years. The Earth's age is estimated by uranium. Scientist's don't claim to know exactly when the Earth was formed (it was a long slow process of aggregating hunks of rock afterall), but we have reasonable guesses. The oldest known rock on Earth has been dated to 4.2 billion years.

[farayman3]

@RespectMyHate Oke.

[RespectMyHate]

@farayman3 God always existed, He is eternal. Something always existed, so this ever existing something is God. (It's really not that hard to understand)

[farayman3]

@RespectMyHate I'm sorry but something like evolution explains a lot more than creationism. That is just shifting the problem... It sound old but there always is the question, how did god come to exist. After all, religion was invented in the dark ages so that people could 'explain' thing that they didn't understand. (First form of since maybe...)

[alarikmarcus]

In actuality, it's not like Einstein even completely revolutionized science. Sure, his notion of physics expanded and improved Newtonian physics, but it's not like they completely turned science on its head or shooed it out the door. It's the same science, just clarified. It's more like a person with bad eyesight updating his/her prescription for glasses than anything else, probably. Science works by approximations and improvements, not by wildassed guesses.

[alarikmarcus]

So sure, I'd be perfectly willing to accept the notion that we could be off by millions or even a billion (or more?) years, but I think you fail to understand how radiocarbon dating works (any idea what a half-life is?). More importantly (and readdressing the neutrinos), I don't think you realize how "revolutionary" (e.g., faster-than-light particles mean Einstein was wrong) means something different to a scientist than a layperson.