NOTE: Low bandwidth video compression struggles with large numbers of randomly-moving particles such as confetti or the diffusing ions and molecules shown in this video. If the video looks muddy or you can't see what's happening, you may need to switch to watching the HD version of the video: click the gear icon next to the video then 'quality' and select the 1080p or HD version. Also, watching on a computer with a large screen and good internet connection will help. The most affected parts are from 4:00-4:30 and 5:12-6:00 in this video. My apologies for the compression artifacts, but fortunately RU-vid allows you to select higher quality versions if your device and internet connection allow.
How are the different frequencies or colours of light translated to the nerve cells? As it appears that only a black and white image would be produced from this set-up. Great video series by the way, keep making them and the views will come.
@@simonpeggboard4004 This video demonstrate the working of a rod cell, indeed it produce black and white image. To detect color we need signal from 3 different kind of cone cell each sensitive to a range of frequency.
I think if you were to do more animations like these in the future, simplification when dealing with areas affected by compression may be a good idea. Things like showing the rhodopsin, transducin, and phosphodiesterase as simple spheres might make the whole thing a bit less artifacted! Nevertheless, thank you, this video was great!
As someone who did a whole degree in molecular biology, I can't stress enough how well-made this video is, specifically in relation to the "quantitative thinking" concept and visualising/explaining the real physical interactions that take place, instead of just explaining a singular, neat cascade like most university lectures do. The "random motion" part of such processes is almost never elucidated and students come away thinking things are a lot more static and straight-forward than they are. Translation is a classic example, where the mechanism is described something like, "the ribosome incorporates the next amino acid in the chain," rather than letting students know that the correct amino acid actually has to randomly bump into the complex for that to happen - it sounds counter-intuitive unless you have a good grasp on how fast molecules are bumping around and interacting per second.
@@kennethbransford820 Hi Ken. First, let's take a look at the motivation for your question: You are likely a theist of some description who has decided to believe, at face value and without evidence, in some god myth or other, most likely of Judeo-Christian origin. Now, believing something with no evidence and then finding that evidenced reality conflicts with those beliefs is not a good reason to criticise the evidenced reality. It's also not logically sound to go about denying or trying to argue with evidence reality because you don't like it or wish it was different. The proper way to investigate and understand the world is simply to form hypotheses based on observations and then test them - that is the scientific method. Nothing you could ever observe would ever require you to hypothesise wildly about the existence of a god, and cultural god concepts are not testable hypotheses. Secondly, atoms are "self-assembling" all the time. Oxygen atoms in the air come in the form of O2 - two oxygen atoms "self-assembled" together. Basic chemistry tells us that their arrangement of electron orbitals are such that they tend to form covalent double bonds when coming into contact, much like two magnets with opposite polarity will attract. Hydrogen likes to bod with itself and another oxygen atom, you may have heard of the compound that produces, we call it "water". Now, what I think you meant was that amino acids supposedly can't self-assemble into proteins or that nucleotides can't self-assemble into nucleic acids, but you're out of luck, because both of those things happen all the time, too. In living organisms, however, mechanisms have evolved over time to make these processes more efficient so that the genes of the organism will be protected and replicated by the organisms surviving to reproduce, perhaps many times over. This is because the very first self-assembly of proteins or nucleic acids that were more successful than others were those that were shaped in such a way that they made copies of themselves - and all life since has just been ever more complex ways of continuing to do that. We know this happened because we can use genetics to trace the evolutionary relationships of different organisms and see where they are genetically the same and where they differ. All living organisms have 1 or more HOX genes that control the developmental layout of the organism. They are very old genes that we all share, going right back to simple sponges. We also see mountains of other evidence for evolution from numerous fields all adding up to so much that now we call it a theory, meaning an over-arching and undisputable framework for how reality works, akin to a law in mathematics. So even though it's impossible to have fossil evidence of the very first self-replicating molecules, we know they had to exist. If you think assuming gods and creation myths is somehow more reasonable than simply following the empirical evidence to see what it tells us, you're just wrong, like you are probably wrong about most of what you think you know, because you've been indoctrinated with bad ideas with no supporting evidence and haven't spent enough time trying to understand sound ideas with tons of supporting evidence. You probably don't even understand the requirement for evidence or what constitutes acceptable evidence.
@@PinataOblongata === Thank you Mr. Pinata Oblongata for replying to me. I hope you don't mind as I will answer you using both of your comments here on this You Tube thread. The vibrating of atoms firstly is astoundingly fast as I have just found out. 8 THz = 8 000 000 000 000 vibrations per second. This takes me aback very badly. I had no idea. Also you failed to mention not all atoms can self assemble and create living systems or life. This is so much more complicated then methane or water forming since these are based on the natural energy levels based on the laws of physics. What laws are involved for the existence of your organic computer brain? The abilities that you are now in possession of allowing you to think, and to have consciousness, using complex formulaic chemical equations that so-called happened from dirt is? IMPOSSIBLE. The folding protein molecule is just one example that design did it. This universe didn't just happen with all of the laws of physics and chemistry originated from. You also have our planet earth that once was a ball of rock floating through space. How did the correct ratios of gasses and atmospheric pressures happen? Our oceans were at on time toxic. Photosynthesis didn't exist. How did the chlorophyll molecule come into existence? Like that brain of yours. How did an organic solar panel able to split atoms using energy from the sun happen by so-called accident? How did the fine tuning of the universe happen, where if the electromagnetic forces for bonding were a trillionth stronger or weaker, we wouldn't be here. If the laws of quantum mechanics responsible for quantum tunneling didn't exist, our sun would stop shining. There are so many combinatorial numbers and mathematics needed for your existence that DESIGN, is the only ANSWER for your existence. You just don't know any better in that you were not by an accident, or accidents. Self replicating organisms can not happen with so-called self assembling atoms. Self replication is very, very complicated. This too doesn't just happen willy nilly. The sequencing of amino acids is beyond explanation. You do know that misfolding proteins, or amino acids in the wrong position of wrong slot causes CANCER. Also, why didn't the folding proteins for so-called first life, not decay right after they were formed at the molecular levels? You didn't know? There is no frame work in existence to where life can be traced back to dirt. This is the great lie being told. It doesn't exist. If you enjoy letting these men or pseudoscience evolutionists priests lie to you, and to do your thinking for you. Then that is your fault in allowing these men to hijack your mind. That is your choice. You can be a lemming and a follower of men if you want to. Not me. I am to smart for that. === Evolution = Self Assembling Atoms = Impossible ====
@@PinataOblongata Check your shoe size... add your age and you will find your IQ. Everything you said above is nonsense. You have not seen any of it yourself and are just a parrot babbling away in your Fallen State of ignorant intellectualism.
@@kwimms sorry you're emotionally upset about what the evidence shows, but reality doesn't care about your feelings. If you don't understand the evidence, perhaps avail yourself of it.
the complexity of organic life is mindblowing. All this is happening in one single cell, of one single part of a body full of millions of cells with different functions, every single milisecond. And it all evolved from a single first cell just by random iteration. it feels like it simply shouldn't be possible, but here we are. it's amazing.
Agreed! I loved working on the visual system as it is mindbogglingly optimized and well evolved to the task of detecting light over an enormous dynamic range.
@@dean-alex-bolton4928 Whether or not you call the forces of nature "God" doesn't hinder our ability to study and understand them/it. If anything, it's just a lazy cop-out; people are figuring the universe out, whether it's "Natural" or "God" makes almost no difference (in my mind they're one and the same)
@@dean-alex-bolton4928 Look, it's a non issue. If the greatest minds in theology, philosophy, and all branches of science couldn't reach a consensus after thousands of years, I don't see how it's even feasible for you to make such a claim. It's conjecture and you aren't even aware that it is.
He is likely quite busy. He works for a company called Simbiotic Software, where he develops and designs interactive simulations and content for electronic biology textbooks. This software is used in universities worldwide. As much as I would love to have him publishing world class content here on youtube for my consumption, his genius for quantitatively understanding molecular interactions is needed more in academia, where it can be applied to rigorous curriculum.
@@tiberiusG I was going to say, "who would master such beautiful graphic presentation and then stop after two videos?" It makes sense if such mastery is his job, but he's doing so much more here than mere images in textbooks or papers. This should be part of a educational series on blu-ray
I honestly don't know what to be more astounded about: 1. That this occurs 2. That we could possibly understand it 3. That you're able to describe it so beautifully. The amplification of the energy of a few photons into our visual sense of a scene taking place in the world is so incredible. I had heard that our ears can distinguish vibrations in air the size of half a hydrogen atom (which I hope you will do a video on). That amplification is also mindblowing, but I hadn't considered it for light before.
@@28704joe === Not natural selection, but design is the reason for your existence. There is no other way that it could have happened. === Evolution = Self Assembling Atoms = Impossible ====
@@kennethbransford820 "design is the reason for your existence" sorry the answer is not that easy, seems like you are looking for a God. Go back and do some reading on the evolution of life. Read up on a guy named Charles Darwin.
I had no idea that the process of vision was so complex and interesting. What fascinates me the most about all this is that while I am watching your video, what you are explaining to me is happening in myself.
Absolutely amazing animations and easy to follow explanations. I have always assumed that the many biological processes look exactly like this but seeing it so clearly is so beautiful. I would love more videos just like this one, related to biophysics. For example how do other homeostatic processes in the body look and function on this small scale. Keep up the good content.
Also I think you would get more traffic to your videos if you try to make the title and thumbnail more accessible and clickbait-y, but in a good way. For example, this video's title "Phototransduction: Amplification from molecule to cell" is a bit too technical ... Checkout Veritasium's videos on clickbait and taking advantage of the youtube algorithm.
@@KerryKim the point is, you truly deserve millions of subacribers. I'm on RU-vid for mabe 7 8 years now (consumer) and I know a lot of channels. Your content is worthy. The key is, continuity + welcoming titles.
I literally watched 5 videos and reread my book like 3 times to try to understand this concept and all the videos were either lacking labels or lacking visuals. This one actually made it slightly understandable. Thank you. Difficult concept to explain and show, but you did a great job.
Intuitively, I have always thought that the vision process was instantaneous. but after seeing your explanation I realize that it takes a certain time from when the light hits us until it reaches our brain, imperceptibly, very little time, but something. my mind lives nanoseconds in the past. Amazing. thanks for the video
People say there is beauty in simplicity, I would say there's also just as much beauty in complexity and this whole process has an awe-insipiring amount of complexity and it's just a simplification!! And of course this was an amazingly well put together video! Beautiful visuals and crystal clear explanations! Great job!!
Thanks - really great. The more we understand these processes, the more we realize, what a great accomplishment sentimental life really is. And, in the same time, how evolution left its trace in each of these (quite complicated) processes. This is all not necessarily an absolute optimum - but a lot of local ones, improved step by step, very old "solutions" left in place, even if these sometimes seem a little bit odd (like the place of the light sensitive membranes on the back side of the retina).
Please keep making videos. Your animations are some of the best I’ve ever seen and you do a fantastic job explaining the concepts. I work as a biology tutor and I will 100% be sharing this video!
Such an underrated channel, can you explain how this happens in cones of different types? How do rhodopsins respond to different wavelengths(if that’s the correct question)? Thank you!
I am not a biologist, but one can speculate that the distance between the "plates" seen in the animation (surfaces where rhodopsin were floating) is crucial. Keep in mind that light is an EM wave, so the described distance may affect which wavelengths are absorbed and which are not. Maybe someone can confirm this hypothesis.
Stumbled upon this and previous video - love the pace, animations and narration. Very good demonstration of complexity of processes within our body, thank you!! Hope to see and learn more! I’d be very interested in learning this process/sequence of events: what happens between the time I think/decide to lift a thumb up to actual moving the thumb up
it's a shame there hasn't been more videos. this is incredibly interesting, and he is very good at explaining it to laymen. the animations are perfect! even the low quality is of no concern, the writing and dictation are perfect, and the information is concise and to the point. I subbed just in case there's more in the future.
I just noticed this 😢 yeah it is a shame! I'm studying neurobiology and this video did a fantastic job explaining. Much better than anything else I've seen/heard. I was really hoping he had a whole series!
yessss please do more this is channel is extremely fuckign underrated the animations take it the next level and i cand actually understand what hes talking about with them
I just discovered this channel and it's the greatest example of a hidden gem. i'd be so interested in the maths and physics part. looking forward to future videos.
I always wondered what happens to ion channels in presence of random collisions between dynamically moving molecules. I always wondered how they find each other. Simple answers like affinity didn’t let me imagine it. Finally a nice video to visualise it. Many thanks. A much needed visualisation.
I have been wondering about compound eyes but that is probably not going to be a video soon. Plenty to cover about more familiar eyes. Another interesting thing would be red green blindness (I got bit of that) and other such things.
This was actually fascinating The eye is literally countless tiny machines in a swirling whirlwind of random motion and fluid They do their work tirelessly, and they don't even know they exist; they have no consciousness Yet the random patterns they create simulate what we call "vision"
Perhaps those tiny machines do have consciousness and personalities. It is we humans who live in a symbiosis with millions of cells, therefore our consciousness is their consciousness
I hope you will keep making this kind of videos because they are truly remarkable, both in clarity of the presentation and in the amazing animations. Thank you very much for your effort!
Please, PLEASE make more videos. This was such an excellent explanation! You have so much to offer the world, and I appreciate the gift of your knowledge. Thank you.
Pretty amazing stuff. Nice to see some discussion on the random thermodynamic properties of protiens instead of the magically guided nanomachine we tend to see.
Quantative thinking is key, things are moving, they constantly break down and new ones take their place, cycling and shuffling all make a sort of of equilibrium. Good presentation, made me remember my decade old neurology course straight away.
You're right. In brighter light, we can notice flickering light from film projectors or monitors, which have to refresh an image at above about 30 times per second otherwise the flicker is too obvious. The rods are optimized for very low light conditions, and have higher sensitivity at the cost of a slower response. The net result is that it is hard for us to detect rapid flickers in very dim light conditions--we would likely be able to see the flicker (if it was below ~30 Hz or so) if the flicker was brighter and we were relying on our cones (which have faster but smaller responses to light).
Please please go into the biophysics, I am a layman but am incredibly deep into electromagnetic research and this is quite intriguing for some ideas I have
Absolutely phenomenal animation, I have been studying this as a hobby for 15 years, never have I seen diagrams and animation so well constructed with a sense of time flow of the stepwise actions. Thank you
Thanks Kerry, for producing this outstanding presentation. You are gifted in your understanding and in your ability to convey that understanding to others.
As a philosophy student interested with the mind and experience - it really helps to have a detailed understanding of basic perceptual processes. It still baffles me why we are conscious of only a very small part of what processes occur in our bodies.
Super video and expert use of Blender and Maya to tell a worthwhile story, which to me includes the wonder that most physical life processes require random movement. To try to answer one of your last 2 questions for the curious viewers: my guess is that cold-blooded animals have fewer, and less vigorous random movements on each membrane disk of their rods, so they may have fewer false-positive amplifications and therefore see better in low light than warm-blooded animals.
This is a great video that I'll be sharing with my third-year animal physiology students! The only additional step that would be useful is how the hyperpolarisation of the membrane leads to a change in neurotransmitter release to the bipolar cells.
Dear almighty youtube algorithm, please reward this gentleman with millions of views and subscriber so that we get more videos like this ! Dear Kerry Kim, you are definitely in the top educational scientific youtubers here, right next to veritasium, vsauce, 3blue1brown, etc Please continue with those videos !!
What an amazing overview, an animated visual tour of the photoreceptor rod cells inner mechanisms... Now thanks to your explanation I am surprised I can even see enough to write this comment. Such complexity, it is mind boggling imagining this even works 😌
Fascinating. I found as a non-scientist that I could understand the process in a rudimentary way. It helped that I viewed the video at 75% speed the second time. I hope to see more videos.
You are so cool! Your videos are amazing! I am getting a lot out of them. The audio is a bit echoy though and makes it hard to hear you at times. At my home studio I got some cheap acoustic panels and a lavalier microphone on Amazon and it made the audio much better. With this kind of change your channel could blow up! You are such a great explainer and I really like the 3d visualizations. Very inspiring and awesome. Thank you.
@@KerryKim A great sound is mostly attained by absorbing all sound waves so they don’t bounce back into the microphone, blurring the signal. Pad the space around you with pillows, and avoid any place with flat walls. Sound mostly reflects how the space around you is designed. Only then consider a good microphone or a device that has good microphone and software/hardware sound filtering. Usually your average phone has good microphone and filtering, and an average PC will have a terrible microphone, so try recording with your phone. I have many questions about your work, but before that, I hope I helped some bit. Tanks so much for your amazing channel
Your videos are excellent! I hope you keep making them. Only thing you can improve is the audio quality - maybe sound panels or just some processing to remove echo. Regardless, I’m sharing a link to your channel to everyone I know :)
Thank you! I agree the sound needs work and thank you for pointing that out. I used different audio processing techniques for this than my other video. Do you find the other to have better or worse sound quality, or are they about the same? Regardless, I am making changes (hopefully improvements) to my next.
@@KerryKim A moderately good microphone could fix the sound problems. A lapel mic could work or better yet, a medium-priced USB condenser mic with a stand. It has been a long time since I've purchased one so I don't have a particular recommendation. Also, audacity has a noise filter which works fairly well, but this probably won't get rid of the echo. You could either plug the mic into your camera, or synchronize the sound track in your video editing software. Traditionally you can clap to sync the sound to the video, but I find it easier to look at the waveform from the camera mic & your good mic. Hope this helps, I love the animations! The quality of the animations is what I expect from much larger youtube channels.
Thanks for the animations! It's really helpful to have visual memory of the process - I'll remember how a rod cell amplifies a single photon's signal forever.
I recently did a disection of eye and there was only written in my book that photons stimulate the retinal cell , and now my mind is blown away how complex this is .I can not believe it is happening right now .
Animations of biochemical processes like this are so beautiful but so rare (probably because of the work needed), what physics engine did you use to render this? Would you consider making your source code public?
I teach AP Biology and this was a great example of to show cellular communication. The visual you've created is absolutely top quality. Please make more!
