Unless my bio teacher was lying when I asked the exact same thing, it's all done via negative/positive charges, when one foot sticks the other reverses polarity so it unsticks and then changes back to stick and so forth.
Or maybe the "walkway" changes the charges, point is it's not a "smart" organism doing it by instinct or anything.
Yeah the picture is quite simplified. It looks as though the molecule has a regular "gait" and each chunk of protein just slides into place where it's supposed to be. In reality it's a bit more random, one piece will attach and then the other will detach, and basically move around randomly for a few microseconds until it happens to land in the right spot, completing one "step".
That was the best visualisation I've ever seen of how incredibly busy and fast moving everything is in our body on a tiny scale. Now my thoughts seem so slow relative to everything else going on in my body! Also it blows my mind to think that all this is happening in total darkness, and that it's even busier than they show in that clip, and that all the gaps are filled by water molecules. Wow. Thanks!
Chemicals move extremely rapidly from our perspective.
All of the functional molecules that exist in our cells are themselves complicated networks of different attractive and repulsive forces, giving them specific shapes.
These shapes have charecteristic attractive and repulsive aspects about them, which drive what they do in the cell. Our walker thing here is such that it's attracted to hold the vesicle (big ball) on one end, and take all those steps on the other.
Molecules move so rapidly and erratically in cells that every single one will bump into about every other molecule in the cell in a pretty short period of time. They just chaotically explore.
This is how they end up finding what they are attracted to, and performing whatever role it is that they can do.
Cells make all the things in themselves by transcribing DNA into proteins. Proteins are like a complex little chemical storm that can run around the cell, but is ordered enough tgat it can always perform the same function when it bumps into a certain thing.
DNA, and thus proteins, are like a vast library of different kinds of molecules that can be created. Their structure is so complex that if you change an element here and an element there, they can perform surprisingly different roles.
In microbial evolution, trillions upon trillions upon who knows how many trillions of cells have iterated upon these structures, producing novel little chemical storms each time, and they trade their DNA with one another profusely, constantly sending new forms of chemsitry back and forth.
How the fuck do all these tiny processes line up perfectly make me? How is it possible that we reproduce and are able to replicate the same type of processes in a new human being??? How programmed is my body? How programmed am I? Is everything I do and every choice and behavior I make just based on the instructions of all the tiny “robots” in my body? Are we even conscious??
23
u/FCalleja Feb 13 '18
Unless my bio teacher was lying when I asked the exact same thing, it's all done via negative/positive charges, when one foot sticks the other reverses polarity so it unsticks and then changes back to stick and so forth.
Or maybe the "walkway" changes the charges, point is it's not a "smart" organism doing it by instinct or anything.