Detailed Discussions - Nature's Incredible BACTERIAL FLAGELLAR MOTOR - Smarter Every Day 300B

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Prash clearly loves what he does! There's nothing greater than watching someone so deep in a topic they love explain their work and passion. Its soooo infectious <3

My four-year-old daughter and I love watching these videos together. Thank you for the amazing content and for helping us get Smarter Every Day.

Microscopic locomotion has always been a wicked interesting topic

7:57 Just to clarify, a hydrogen ion (H⁺) is essentially a proton. This is because a neutral hydrogen atom, which has an atomic number of 1, consists of one proton and one electron. When hydrogen loses its single electron, what remains is just the proton, hence H⁺ is referred to as a proton. It's important to note that referring to a proton as a "positively charged atom" 8:01 isn't entirely accurate because for any element other than hydrogen, the atomic number is greater than one, meaning there are multiple protons along with neutrons in the nucleus. This distinction is fundamental in chemistry, particularly when discussing the behavior of acids and bases where hydrogen ions (protons) are often transferred between molecules.

Being able to translate the microbiology terms into "equivalent" mechanical terms so both understand what each other are talking about, while still keeping it simple enough for the audience to understand clearly shows these two know their respective fields VERY well, and can bridge two normally non-interacting disciplines at both an intellectual and practical level. VERY well done! I find this topic incredibly interesting, and I'd love a follow-up video in year or so to see what Prash and his group discover and learn about!

"cause its cool!" that's the best quote of the video !

Extra points for the good audio. It's important, ya know.

C-clips, yea. At a place I worked we had e-clips that were less than 1mm in diameter. We called them 'fleas'. You carefully pick one up with your tweezers and then ... uh-oh, he's gone. Next! Needless to say we stocked them by the bucket load. 😁

Another way to think about this is not that it spins, but that is climbs along the red chain of proteins. It happens to turn around as it climbs along. If you broke the red ring and pulled it into a line (or a spiral) it would walk along, spinning as it does so. Flip the red into its other form and it will still climb along but because the shape has flipped, it climbs the other direction as it consumes the H+ ions.

at 36:50 - it is blowing my mind that cellular movement is so similar to electrical motors and mechanical machines. It seems so obvious in hindsight, but I would not have expected a little stater changing the direction of an electromagnetic motor

I know that cells have even more complex systems, like a lot more complex than this, but since I saw this thing I have also been fascinated, is so awesome

It’s amazing how Scot acts and does not realize that he is suppressing Miriam from participating in the conversation 😢 thank you for trying to include Miriam into the conversation

“Like Lego :D” I love him 😂 10:44

38:25 It's not the size of the water molecule that maintains the seal, it's the surface tension. Have you ever done the experiment where you fill a salt shaker with water and try to drain it? Even though the holes in a salt shaker are 10,000,000x larger than a water molecule, the water won't flow through. That's why she mentions the region is hydrophobic - the water will self-organize and exhibit a lot of surface tension rather than wet and flow. Most biological structures rely on wetting and surface tension gradients and, at those small scales, the relative forces are incredibly strong. Some amino acids have polar molecules which attract water and others have non-polar molecules which repel water. The polar residues tend to be on the outside of the protein and the non-polar residues are on the inside.

Are the STLs to print that model available?

Hey Destin! I'm a Cryo-EM applications scientist working for Thermo Fisher Scientific at the place where they build the microscopes you showed in the video (In Eindhoven, the Netherlands). I'd be happy to arrange a tour of the factory where these microscopes are built if you are interested.

Its an internal gear pump!Could the symmetric mismatch be related to how it's driven. It would almost be exactly how an internal gear pump works. I think the model only works if the driving gear and blue part are fixed while the yellow and orange part would rotate.

This is absolutely amazing! One thing that popped in my mind, could that red colored state changing protein - the outer ring - work similarly to a two state compliant mechanism like the one piece light switch? Fantastic video, thank you Destin and everyone doing this very important work. ❤

You'd enjoy looking into ATP synthase as well, a motor pumping out our fundamental energy molecule.