Nature's Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!) - Smarter Every Day 300

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Finally, an explanation for how Tails' helicopter butt works in Sonic the Hedgehog

As a molecular biologist, I think Destin did a great job of explaining how the expression, imaging, chemotaxis, and the rest works. I hope this video makes people think deeply and ask important questions. And if this comment gets enough upvotes I’ll do a video about ATP synthase 😂

I love how when Prash talks about the clockwise and counter-clockwise motion he moves the motor in the appropriate direction for the viewer and not himself. It demonstrates his natural ability to get outside of his own head and perspective effortlessly.

One thing to remember when trying to figure out how some of these chemical structures came about is that there has been such a hugely unfathomable number of generations of them. Their generations can be a few minutes to a few days and have been around for as much as 3.7 billion years. That's 1.3 trillion days.

The thing that's been blowing my mind the last year or so is nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen is an essential ingredient for life but the majority of it is bound up in an inaccessible state of triple bonded N2. To split that bond in a laboratory you need something like 500°C temperatures at 200+ atmospheres of pressure. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. And yet, there are bacteria with these enormously complex enzymes called nitrogenases that can take triple bonded atmospheric nitrogen and in a move just short of magic (I'm being facetious) break it apart at or below room temp. Without nitrogenase life on earth would have all died off long ago as earth's supply of free nitrogen was consumed, but these bacteria saved us all. More than that, nitrogenase itself requires elements like molybdenum which are also biologically inaccessible - except for other very particular bacteria that have the ability to collect it and make it accessible to the ones that use it for nitrogen fixation. All over the place there are biological process that seem to intuit the needs of others, and not always with an apparent benifit to the giver. If I weren't alive I'd find life unbelievable.

Biologist here, this is the part where I see many people make the wrong assumption. The flagella in a sperm is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the rotating flagella in a bacterium. The name is the same, I know, but they operate completely differently. The sperm flagella does not rotate at all, It's actually a sliding mechanism inside that creates a swaying motion. The flagella in bacteria are the rotating ones! ATP Synthase, though, is also another rotating molecular machines that exist in both bacteria and mammalian cells.

I respect this man's credentials as a biologist. I respect this other man as an engineer. As a PC gamer, get your fingers off the monitor!

Rest assured, it took the bacteria a lot longer to evolve the flagella than it too for you to design the missile ;-)

The dithering sound effect was spot on 😂

Another amazing thing about this video is that Destin has built up a reputation such that he can just call up any random reasercher anywhere and they take the time to explain their work to him. That is huge intellectual capitol.

Structural biologist here. Pretty good job explaining how it works. On the question how we know where what goes: sometimes you can see the start of a chain, and we know how long each amino acid is, so it is just a matter of fitting them one by one.

I find it cool that a pile of cells (humans) has discovered how cells work, and that this pile of cells has come up with a way to make motors/mechanisms that are similar to what nature has already created.

The coolest thing about being an 11M sub YouTuber is that you can read about a cool thing, and then just go talk to the scientist that discovered it.

Excuse me while I engineerify your biology.🤣

Lovely to see Prash smile when Destin interrupts to ask a clarifying question and make engineering analogies.

One of my favorite things is when Destin speaks with someone who is very knowledgeable and passionate, you can tell they want to geek out over the topic, but they question how smart this YouTuber actually is. And then without fail in his videos, Destin will show how smart he is, and the expert perks up and the vibe of the video changes immediately.

One of my favorite things about Destin's channel is his ability to find the people who LOVE what they do. Who are genuinely excited to be doing that work. Whether it's making film at Kodak, or people uncovering the secrets of cells. Just fantastic.

Someone already mentioned that the reason its so efficient is friction, heat and physics works differently at the molecular level.

A team at a Google recently had proven that programming languages with extremely small number of instructions, like x8 or less, can spontaneously create self-replicating structures under all conditions. So, given the time it can make motors like this one.