mandevu.net

I am not a cellular or a molecular biologist. I appreciate the research (what’s not to love about feedback loops, emergent properties and complex systems?), but I just do not enjoy the process. Nothing personal– I am just not a lab guy. But I am a biologist. As such, I was pretty excited when the gang over at Make blog tuned me in to clips of Harvard University Biovision’s award winning “Inner Life of the Cell” animation. I had seen an earlier example of their work– wonderful imagery of cellular processes, set to music, prompting my wife and I to dust off our molecular biology skills (frankly, her’s needed little dusting), and shout out the names of the structures and processes depicted in the piece. This time their animation has documentary-style narration, which is a nice touch. Elsewhere on the page, there are clips of other processes, lab procedures, as well as commentary on the project itself. Lots of fun things to watch for the biologically inclined, especially if you have bandwidth. I could not find their licensing policies on the website. But I hope that I will be able to put some of this to use next time I have to teach undergrads basic cell biology.