Our friends at XVIVO, a scientific visualization company from Rocky Hill, CT, have just released a brand new animation that will blow your mind as it takes you on a ride of biochemical metabolic processes inside mitochondria. The video, titled “Powering the Cell: Mitochondria,” was developed together with Harvard University, and is the second installment to the super popular “The Inner Life of the Cell” animation.
Make sure to watch it full screen:
From a press announcement obtained by Medgadget:
“Inner Life of the Cell” was originally intended for undergraduate life sciences students at Harvard. However, the animation went viral after being shown in the Siggraph Electronic Theater in 2006. The mix of publicity, criticism and acclaim proved that there was an unmet demand for compelling scientific visuals that educate as well as inspire. “It’s quite clear that we understand the world primarily through sight,"says Dr. Robert Lue Ph.D., Director of Life Sciences Education at Harvard and a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. "Somehow we don’t use that in teaching science as we really should.” Both Harvard and XVIVO received letters from students, teachers, and scientists all over the world, asking when the next chapter would be available. Well, the wait is over.
The newly released four and a half minute animation, “Powering the Cell: Mitochondria,” transports students into the three-dimensional microscopic world of mitochondria. The animation highlights the production of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) – mobile molecules which store chemical energy derived from the breakdown of foodstuffs. ATP molecules act as a kind of currency, imparting chemical energy to power most of the cell’s activities.
Dr. Lue points out “The production of ATP is a fundamental process in all living organisms, and here we show it in the context of an animal cell’s mitochondria. It is the combination of many proteins specifically arranged within mitochondria that allow this amazing process to occur, so we wanted to visualize a more complete picture. This presented both the challenge and exciting opportunity to represent several aspects of mitochondrial structure and activity that have never been visualized before. We hope this will add to the viewers’ understanding and appreciation of one of the cornerstones of metabolism.”
Project page: Powering the Cell: Mitochondria @ XVIVO …
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