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How Enzymes Work? – PDB/RCSB

April 20, 2019 at 3:55 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

Enzymes are a catalytic subgroup of proteins formed as end products of the Central Dogma of biology. They are essential for cellular functioning. Here in this Protein Data Bank (PDB) video the enzymes constituting the hugely important metabolic pathway –the citric acid cycle– that connects carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism are briefly visualized. Subsequently, the enzyme aconitase (aconitate hydratase; EC 4.2.1.3) in this hugely important metabolic pathway is highlighted as an example. The steps taking place in the active site […]

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What is a Protein? – Protein Data Bank/RCSB

April 19, 2019 at 3:17 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

Proteins are end products of the Central Dogma of biology. They are essential for cellular structure and function. Proteins have dizzyingly diverse structures. Since the invention of X-ray chrystallography by the Australian physicist William Lawrence Bragg structures of many complex molecules have been resolved including proteins. Solved structures of proteins are deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), a free and curated structural data resource for thousands of biological molecules. These structures are stored in the form of Cartesian coordinates […]

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Hurricane-induced Selection on the Morphology of an Island Lizard – Nature (2018)

April 10, 2019 at 4:15 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Video

Hurricanes are catastrophically destructive and can have long-lasting effects on ecological systems. For instance, the Atlantic hurricane season of 2005 was a particularly strong one with record breaking 27 named storms. Mass mortality observed after hurricanes may be a force of natural selection. The hypothesis that destructive events such as hurricanes could drive natural selection has been controversial. In order to test this, scientists surveyed a common, small-bodied lizard (Anolis scriptus) that lives throughout the Turks and Caicos archipelago before […]

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Ritualized Aggression in Humans – Haka / Ben Hall (2011)

March 26, 2019 at 8:46 am / Human Nature, Video

Ritualization of aggression is a beneficial strategy to tone down conflicts and avoid serious damaging consequences. Most of the time fighting is risky, wasteful and destructive. Ritualized aggression can resolve conflicts without resorting to actual violence. Besides humans ants, dogs and crayfish are known to engage in mock battles. Analytical tools used by evolutionary biologists have been very successful in explaining emergence of complex human and non-human behavior. Ritualized aggression is among them. The workers of the Malaysian giant forest […]

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Bald Eagle Cam – Live from Minnesota – Breeding Season 2019

March 17, 2019 at 11:32 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

The 2019 breeding season for a pair of iconic Bald Eagles in Minnesota is continuing. After pair bonding and nest repair (nestoration) eagles started incubating eggs again in! A pair of iconic Bald Eagles have been raising their chicks in Central Minnesota on a nest constructed at 75 feet altitude on a cottonwood tree. You can learn more about this nest from the FAQs page of the website hosting this nestcam. Last year on March 9th Mom got into labor […]

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An Introduction to Zebrafish Brain

March 16, 2019 at 6:18 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

What is consciousness? How do we learn complex coordinated movements like riding a bicycle and never forget afterwards? How does your brain know where your body ends and bicycle starts? The humble Zebrafish has all the clues to these questions and more. Systems simple enough to understand and complex enough to make generalizations always attracted scientists. The 80,000-neurons in the brain of the developing the zebrafish embryos provides one of those ideal systems to understand vertebrate brain evolution and function. […]

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Nice Guys Finish First – Richard Dawkins (1987)

March 16, 2019 at 1:54 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Human Nature, Video

In this BBC documentary Richard Dawkins explores the evolution of cooperation. The problem has been discussed intensely since Darwin’s time and is still being investigated scientifically. Cooperative species are quite successful but rare. Social insects (ants, wasps, bees and termites) make up only 3 percent of animal diversity yet they may constitute up to 50 percent of the total animal biomass in land habitats. Among 43,678 known species of spiders cooperative behavior evolved in only a few. How could a […]

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A Virtual Tour of a Cell – XVIVO Scientific Animation (2018)

March 9, 2019 at 8:12 pm / Molecular Nature, Technical Notes, Video

The Cellscape is one of the many fascinating scientific visualizations created by XVIVO Scientific Animation Studio. The project was supported by Google Making and Science Team. The creators did a wonderful job in introducing us to the major parts of the cell visible to a viewer in the cytoplasm in a virtual environment. Conjuring the physico-chemical structures such as proteins and enzymes inside a cell is a rather difficult thing to do. The textbooks and diagrams, don’t do a justice […]

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An Annotated Animation of Zebrafish Embryo Development – Edwin Mutuma Murungi (2017)

March 3, 2019 at 7:37 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Evolutionarily speaking all of us are tetrapods and contain a fish inside! Take the retention of embryonic gill arches for example, still observed in quite a few people. Preaurucular pit is the scientific term for this ancestral structure. Its presence in Humans reflects the “evo-devo” aspect of our shared biological heritage with all vertebrates living on earth. Here, animated by Edwin Mutuma Murungi, the annotated animation of zebrafish embryo development produced by Norwegian University of Life Sciences – NMBU Learning […]

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The Axolotl: A Cut Above The Rest – Science Friday/Christian Baker (2016)

March 2, 2019 at 8:57 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Tissue regeneration is a fascinating biological subject. Many invertebrate organisms such as crabs, starfishes, sponges, jawless fish such as the lampreys and planarian flatworms can regenerate body parts. Among the vertebrates salamanders, especially the axolotl is a legendary study species for biologists. The axolotl is a highly endangered Mexican salamander with a fascinating ability to regenerate. Curiously, although both are amphibians salamanders can regenerate but frogs cannot. Comparison of such contrasting groups is particularly useful in understanding organ and tissue […]

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Sounds of Survival – Katie Garrett / bioGraphic (2018)

March 2, 2019 at 7:17 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

“Sound can be a tool for conservation”. — Ben Mirin Sound can be extremely informative in wildlife context. Many animals including mammals from cetaceans to bats appear to have mastered acoustic communication. Cooperative animals such as marmosets can take turns during their conversations and relay multi layer information through seemingly simple high pitched calls such as identity, age, location and gender which can be very effective in dense forest environments. Therefore it is real important to tap into this highly […]

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UConn BioBlitz 2015

February 23, 2019 at 3:37 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

On July 24th – 25th 2015, 49 experts collaborated with >150 citizen scientists to identify 1180 species in a 24-hour marathon of biodiversity survey (see a meta analysis at the bottom of this post). The UConn BioBlitz 2015 had many workshops that continued day and night including Bat activity monitoring, Blacklight/Mercury lamp curtain survey for nocturnal insects, setting camera traps for mammal activity, owl prowl, science expose, ants exploring space as well as tours of Collections Facility and the UConn […]

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Identifying the Key Genes for Regeneration | HHMI BioInteractive (2017)

February 19, 2019 at 8:14 pm / Evolution, Video

All multi-cellular organisms have a healing response. Most have the ability to regenerate lost body parts. Plants regenerate in fairly similar ways across diverse families. Animals on the other hand show a remarkable diversity. One can shred a sponge into pieces but the cells can rearrange and organize themselves in a surprisingly rapid manner. Human tissue and organ regeneration is a curious goal for medicine. However in order to achieve this one must understand whether there are common cellular and […]

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Becoming: Development of a Salamander Embryo – Jan van IJken (2018)

February 10, 2019 at 9:59 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

Everyone of us started life from one single cell formed by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell gave rise to every structure in our bodies. How did that happen? Salamanders especially the axolotl are known to be able to regenerate limbs while frogs and lizards cannot. How and why? The Dutch filmmaker Jan van IJken did a superb job bringing a fresh new artistic look into the fascinating process of vertebrate embryo development. The original […]

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What Good are Introns Anyway? – Nature (2019)

February 6, 2019 at 2:56 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

Molecular Nature Introns are stretches of non-coding regions interspersed with the coding DNA in the genes of eukaryotic organisms. They are widespread, common and sometimes are ridiculously long stressing the economy of the cell. Burden of long introns is not limited to DNA replication which happens only once during cell division but continues to manifest itself at the transcription level where multiple rounds of RNA polymerase II activity consume energy proportional to the longevity of the cell. For instance, the […]

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