0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000 I'm a medical illustrator, 0:00:03.000,0:00:06.000 and I come from a slightly different point of view. 0:00:06.000,0:00:08.000 I've been watching, since I grew up, 0:00:09.000,0:00:13.000 the expressions of truth and beauty in the arts 0:00:13.000,0:00:15.000 and truth and beauty in the sciences. 0:00:15.000,0:00:18.000 And while these are both wonderful things in their own right -- 0:00:18.000,0:00:21.000 they both have very wonderful things going for them -- 0:00:21.000,0:00:27.000 truth and beauty as ideals that can be looked at by the sciences 0:00:27.000,0:00:32.000 and by math are almost like the ideal conjoined twins 0:00:32.000,0:00:33.000 that a scientist would want to date. 0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000 (Laughter) 0:00:37.000,0:00:42.000 These are expressions of truth as awe-full things, 0:00:42.000,0:00:44.000 by meaning they are things you can worship. 0:00:45.000,0:00:49.000 They are ideals that are powerful. They are irreducible. 0:00:50.000,0:00:52.000 They are unique. They are useful -- 0:00:52.000,0:00:54.000 sometimes, often a long time after the fact. 0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000 And you can actually roll some of the pictures now, 0:00:57.000,0:01:00.000 because I don't want to look at me on the screen. 0:01:01.000,0:01:03.000 Truth and beauty are things 0:01:03.000,0:01:07.000 that are often opaque to people who are not in the sciences. 0:01:08.000,0:01:14.000 They are things that describe beauty in a way 0:01:14.000,0:01:19.000 that is often only accessible if you understand the language 0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000 and the syntax of the person 0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000 who studies the subject in which truth and beauty is expressed. 0:01:24.000,0:01:27.000 If you look at the math, E=mc squared, 0:01:27.000,0:01:30.000 if you look at the cosmological constant, 0:01:30.000,0:01:35.000 where there's an anthropic ideal, where you see that life had to evolve 0:01:35.000,0:01:38.000 from the numbers that describe the universe -- 0:01:38.000,0:01:41.000 these are things that are really difficult to understand. 0:01:41.000,0:01:42.000 And what I've tried to do 0:01:42.000,0:01:44.000 since I had my training as a medical illustrator -- 0:01:44.000,0:01:47.000 since I was taught animation by my father, 0:01:47.000,0:01:50.000 who was a sculptor and my visual mentor -- 0:01:51.000,0:01:54.000 I wanted to figure out a way to help people 0:01:55.000,0:01:58.000 understand truth and beauty in the biological sciences 0:01:59.000,0:02:02.000 by using animation, by using pictures, by telling stories 0:02:03.000,0:02:07.000 so that the things that are not necessarily evident to people 0:02:07.000,0:02:11.000 can be brought forth, and can be taught, and can be understood. 0:02:11.000,0:02:16.000 Students today are often immersed in an environment 0:02:17.000,0:02:22.000 where what they learn is subjects that have truth and beauty 0:02:22.000,0:02:27.000 embedded in them, but the way they're taught is compartmentalized 0:02:27.000,0:02:32.000 and it's drawn down to the point where the truth and beauty 0:02:32.000,0:02:33.000 are not always evident. 0:02:33.000,0:02:36.000 It's almost like that old recipe for chicken soup 0:02:36.000,0:02:40.000 where you boil the chicken until the flavor is just gone. 0:02:41.000,0:02:43.000 We don't want to do that to our students. 0:02:43.000,0:02:47.000 So we have an opportunity to really open up education. 0:02:47.000,0:02:50.000 And I had a telephone call from Robert Lue at Harvard, 0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000 in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, 0:02:52.000,0:02:55.000 a couple of years ago. He asked me if my team and I 0:02:56.000,0:03:00.000 would be interested and willing to really change 0:03:00.000,0:03:03.000 how medical and scientific education is done at Harvard. 0:03:03.000,0:03:08.000 So we embarked on a project that would explore the cell -- 0:03:08.000,0:03:11.000 that would explore the truth and beauty inherent 0:03:11.000,0:03:13.000 in molecular and cellular biology 0:03:13.000,0:03:16.000 so that students could understand a larger picture 0:03:16.000,0:03:19.000 that they could hang all of these facts on. 0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000 They could have a mental image of the cell 0:03:22.000,0:03:29.000 as a large, bustling, hugely complicated city 0:03:30.000,0:03:32.000 that's occupied by micro-machines. 0:03:32.000,0:03:35.000 And these micro-machines really are at the heart of life. 0:03:35.000,0:03:36.000 These micro-machines, 0:03:36.000,0:03:39.000 which are the envy of nanotechnologists the world over, 0:03:40.000,0:03:47.000 are self-directed, powerful, precise, accurate devices 0:03:47.000,0:03:50.000 that are made out of strings of amino acids. 0:03:50.000,0:03:54.000 And these micro-machines power how a cell moves. 0:03:54.000,0:03:59.000 They power how a cell replicates. They power our hearts. 0:03:59.000,0:04:00.000 They power our minds. 0:04:01.000,0:04:04.000 And so what we wanted to do was to figure out 0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000 how we could make this story into an animation 0:04:08.000,0:04:11.000 that would be the centerpiece of BioVisions at Harvard, 0:04:12.000,0:04:16.000 which is a website that Harvard has 0:04:16.000,0:04:18.000 for its molecular and cellular biology students 0:04:18.000,0:04:22.000 that will -- in addition to all the textual information, 0:04:23.000,0:04:24.000 in addition to all the didactic stuff -- 0:04:25.000,0:04:27.000 put everything together visually, so that these students 0:04:28.000,0:04:32.000 would have an internalized view of what a cell really is 0:04:32.000,0:04:36.000 in all of its truth and beauty, and be able to study 0:04:36.000,0:04:40.000 with this view in mind, so that their imaginations would be sparked, 0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000 so that their passions would be sparked 0:04:43.000,0:04:44.000 and so that they would be able to go on 0:04:45.000,0:04:49.000 and use these visions in their head to make new discoveries 0:04:49.000,0:04:52.000 and to be able to find out, really, how life works. 0:04:52.000,0:04:58.000 So we set out by looking at how these molecules are put together. 0:04:59.000,0:05:04.000 We worked with a theme, which is, you've got macrophages 0:05:05.000,0:05:06.000 that are streaming down a capillary, 0:05:07.000,0:05:09.000 and they're touching the surface of the capillary wall, 0:05:10.000,0:05:12.000 and they're picking up information from cells 0:05:12.000,0:05:16.000 that are on the capillary wall, and they are given this information 0:05:16.000,0:05:19.000 that there's an inflammation somewhere outside, 0:05:19.000,0:05:21.000 where they can't see and sense. 0:05:21.000,0:05:24.000 But they get the information that causes them to stop, 0:05:24.000,0:05:28.000 causes them to internalize that they need to make 0:05:28.000,0:05:32.000 all of the various parts that will cause them to change their shape, 0:05:33.000,0:05:37.000 and try to get out of this capillary and find out what's going on. 0:05:38.000,0:05:40.000 So these molecular motors -- we had to work 0:05:40.000,0:05:45.000 with the Harvard scientists and databank models 0:05:46.000,0:05:49.000 of the atomically accurate molecules 0:05:49.000,0:05:52.000 and figure out how they moved, and figure out what they did. 0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000 And figure out how to do this in a way 0:05:55.000,0:06:00.000 that was truthful in that it imparted what was going on, 0:06:01.000,0:06:06.000 but not so truthful that the compact crowding in a cell 0:06:06.000,0:06:09.000 would prevent the vista from happening. 0:06:09.000,0:06:13.000 And so what I'm going to show you is a three-minute 0:06:13.000,0:06:16.000 Reader's Digest version of the first aspect of this film 0:06:16.000,0:06:19.000 that we produced. It's an ongoing project 0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000 that's going to go another four or five years. 0:06:22.000,0:06:24.000 And I want you to look at this 0:06:24.000,0:06:28.000 and see the paths that the cell manufactures -- 0:06:28.000,0:06:31.000 these little walking machines, they're called kinesins -- 0:06:32.000,0:06:33.000 that take these huge loads 0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000 that would challenge an ant in relative size. 0:06:37.000,0:06:40.000 Run the movie, please. 0:06:41.000,0:06:44.000 But these machines that power the inside of the cells 0:06:44.000,0:06:48.000 are really quite amazing, and they really are the basis of all life 0:06:48.000,0:06:52.000 because all of these machines interact with each other. 0:06:53.000,0:06:54.000 They pass information to each other. 0:06:55.000,0:06:57.000 They cause different things to happen inside the cell. 0:06:58.000,0:07:01.000 And the cell will actually manufacture the parts that it needs 0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000 on the fly, from information 0:07:03.000,0:07:07.000 that's brought from the nucleus by molecules that read the genes. 0:07:08.000,0:07:12.000 No life, from the smallest life to everybody here, 0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000 would be possible without these little micro-machines. 0:07:16.000,0:07:19.000 In fact, it would really, in the absence of these machines, 0:07:20.000,0:07:22.000 have made the attendance here, Chris, really quite sparse. 0:07:22.000,0:07:26.000 (Laughter) 0:07:26.000,0:07:38.000 (Music) 0:07:38.000,0:07:40.000 This is the FedEx delivery guy of the cell. 0:07:42.000,0:07:43.000 This little guy is called the kinesin, 0:07:44.000,0:07:48.000 and he pulls a sack that's full of brand new manufactured proteins 0:07:48.000,0:07:50.000 to wherever it's needed in the cell -- 0:07:50.000,0:07:53.000 whether it's to a membrane, whether it's to an organelle, 0:07:53.000,0:07:55.000 whether it's to build something or repair something. 0:07:55.000,0:07:59.000 And each of us has about 100,000 of these things 0:07:59.000,0:08:00.000 running around, right now, 0:08:01.000,0:08:04.000 inside each one of your 100 trillion cells. 0:08:04.000,0:08:06.000 So no matter how lazy you feel, 0:08:07.000,0:08:09.000 you're not really intrinsically doing nothing. 0:08:09.000,0:08:13.000 (Laughter) 0:08:13.000,0:08:15.000 So what I want you to do when you go home 0:08:15.000,0:08:18.000 is think about this, and think about how powerful our cells are. 0:08:19.000,0:08:20.000 And think about some of the things 0:08:20.000,0:08:24.000 that we're learning about cellular mechanics. 0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000 Once we figure out all that's going on -- 0:08:27.000,0:08:30.000 and believe me, we know almost a percent of what's going on -- 0:08:31.000,0:08:32.000 once we figure out what's going on, 0:08:32.000,0:08:35.000 we're really going to be able to have a lot of control 0:08:35.000,0:08:37.000 over what we do with our health, 0:08:37.000,0:08:40.000 with what we do with future generations, 0:08:40.000,0:08:41.000 and how long we're going to live. 0:08:42.000,0:08:44.000 And hopefully we'll be able to use this 0:08:44.000,0:08:47.000 to discover more truth, and more beauty. 0:08:47.000,0:09:01.000 (Music) 0:09:01.000,0:09:05.000 But it's really quite amazing that these cells, these micro-machines, 0:09:06.000,0:09:11.000 are aware enough of what the cell needs that they do their bidding. 0:09:11.000,0:09:15.000 They work together. They make the cell do what it needs to do. 0:09:15.000,0:09:21.000 And their working together helps our bodies -- 0:09:21.000,0:09:25.000 huge entities that they will never see -- function properly. 0:09:26.000,0:09:27.000 Enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you. 0:09:27.000,0:09:29.000 (Applause)