Friday beautiful science

Today's Friday beautiful science is an animation created by the animation studio XVIVO using funding from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Harvard University. It's a fantastic illustration of all the things that need to go inside a white blood cell during its survey of a blood vessel and subsequent invasion into infected tissue. It's reasonably accurate, right down to the structural level of the proteins that are depicted. Though the material is probably suitable for mid to upper level biology undergrads, it's still beautiful to watch.



There's a slightly lighter version put to music, if you're not all that interested in the details (or, if you're a biologist, and you recognize everything going on there without the narration).



I confess, these two are so good they give me chills...