This animation was made by the Shenandoah Baptist Church and is famously misleading. The “steps” are the stochastic byproduct of Brownian motion. Here’s an accurate representation:
post
Well you can tell by my bind to tubulin
This motor protein ain't stoppin'
Walkin' the line from A to B
Replenishing the ATP
Anyone have the variant with the pimp hat and cane twirling?
WHY would they not sync the step with the beat 😩
Do they move this slowly? Or is this animation in bullet time?
IIRC it's like 10.000 times faster (I can be wrong but then it's probably way faster).
This animation isn't just sped up, it's also simplified. In reality they don't take steady, purposeful steps. They spaz out with random vibrations (Brownian motion) until the "foot" clicks into place by random chance, then the other one releases and the process repeats. It's like shaking a container filled with legos until they assemble themselves. The proteins are just shaped in such a way that "walking" is the most probable outcome.
The animation is actually slowed down. Kinesin can take something like 100 steps per second. Each step is about 8 nm, and they've been observed to move 600-1000 nm per second.
In reality it wiggles around in Brownian motion but the equilibrium of it "clicking" into place is so attractive that it keeps happening really fast.
I guess this depends on environmental conditions such as
- temperature
- acidity of the internal cell environment
- how available is energy? My guess this mechanism is powered by ATP?
Imagine if that protein suddenly gained conciousness and decides to meditate to gain higher spiritual awakening instead of transporting hormones.
Then a friendly little chaperone protein would come and beat the living shit out of it until it folded itself again and stopped meditating, back to work :)
Body horror, gore
Guess you've never seen the TV show "Another Life"
Is this the protein equivalent of the sole Tiananmen square protester ?
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