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I'm a medical illustrator,

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and I come from a slightly different point of view.

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I've been watching, since I grew up,

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the expressions of truth and beauty in the arts

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and truth and beauty in the sciences.

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And while these are both wonderful things in their own right --

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they both have very wonderful things going for them --

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truth and beauty as ideals that can be looked at by the sciences

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and by math are almost like the ideal conjoined twins

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that a scientist would want to date.

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(Laughter)

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These are expressions of truth as awe-full things,

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by meaning they are things you can worship.

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They are ideals that are powerful. They are irreducible.

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They are unique. They are useful --

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sometimes, often a long time after the fact.

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And you can actually roll some of the pictures now,

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because I don't want to look at me on the screen.

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Truth and beauty are things

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that are often opaque to people who are not in the sciences.

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They are things that describe beauty in a way

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that is often only accessible if you understand the language

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and the syntax of the person

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who studies the subject in which truth and beauty is expressed.

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If you look at the math, E=mc squared,

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if you look at the cosmological constant,

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where there's an anthropic ideal, where you see that life had to evolve

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from the numbers that describe the universe --

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these are things that are really difficult to understand.

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And what I've tried to do

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since I had my training as a medical illustrator --

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since I was taught animation by my father,

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who was a sculptor and my visual mentor --

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I wanted to figure out a way to help people

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understand truth and beauty in the biological sciences

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by using animation, by using pictures, by telling stories

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so that the things that are not necessarily evident to people

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can be brought forth, and can be taught, and can be understood.

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Students today are often immersed in an environment

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where what they learn is subjects that have truth and beauty

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embedded in them, but the way they're taught is compartmentalized

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and it's drawn down to the point where the truth and beauty

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are not always evident.

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It's almost like that old recipe for chicken soup

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where you boil the chicken until the flavor is just gone.

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We don't want to do that to our students.

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So we have an opportunity to really open up education.

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And I had a telephone call from Robert Lue at Harvard,

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in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department,

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a couple of years ago. He asked me if my team and I

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would be interested and willing to really change

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how medical and scientific education is done at Harvard.

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So we embarked on a project that would explore the cell --

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that would explore the truth and beauty inherent

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in molecular and cellular biology

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so that students could understand a larger picture

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that they could hang all of these facts on.

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They could have a mental image of the cell

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as a large, bustling, hugely complicated city

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that's occupied by micro-machines.

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And these micro-machines really are at the heart of life.

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These micro-machines,

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which are the envy of nanotechnologists the world over,

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are self-directed, powerful, precise, accurate devices

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that are made out of strings of amino acids.

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And these micro-machines power how a cell moves.

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They power how a cell replicates. They power our hearts.

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They power our minds.

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And so what we wanted to do was to figure out

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how we could make this story into an animation

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that would be the centerpiece of BioVisions at Harvard,

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which is a website that Harvard has

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for its molecular and cellular biology students

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that will -- in addition to all the textual information,

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in addition to all the didactic stuff --

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put everything together visually, so that these students

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would have an internalized view of what a cell really is

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in all of its truth and beauty, and be able to study

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with this view in mind, so that their imaginations would be sparked,

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so that their passions would be sparked

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and so that they would be able to go on

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and use these visions in their head to make new discoveries

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and to be able to find out, really, how life works.

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So we set out by looking at how these molecules are put together.

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We worked with a theme, which is, you've got macrophages

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that are streaming down a capillary,

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and they're touching the surface of the capillary wall,

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and they're picking up information from cells

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that are on the capillary wall, and they are given this information

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that there's an inflammation somewhere outside,

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where they can't see and sense.

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But they get the information that causes them to stop,

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causes them to internalize that they need to make

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all of the various parts that will cause them to change their shape,

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and try to get out of this capillary and find out what's going on.

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So these molecular motors -- we had to work

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with the Harvard scientists and databank models

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of the atomically accurate molecules

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and figure out how they moved, and figure out what they did.

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And figure out how to do this in a way

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that was truthful in that it imparted what was going on,

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but not so truthful that the compact crowding in a cell

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would prevent the vista from happening.

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And so what I'm going to show you is a three-minute

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Reader's Digest version of the first aspect of this film

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that we produced. It's an ongoing project

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that's going to go another four or five years.

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And I want you to look at this

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and see the paths that the cell manufactures --

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these little walking machines, they're called kinesins --

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that take these huge loads

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that would challenge an ant in relative size.

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Run the movie, please.

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But these machines that power the inside of the cells

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are really quite amazing, and they really are the basis of all life

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because all of these machines interact with each other.

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They pass information to each other.

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They cause different things to happen inside the cell.

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And the cell will actually manufacture the parts that it needs

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on the fly, from information

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that's brought from the nucleus by molecules that read the genes.

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No life, from the smallest life to everybody here,

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would be possible without these little micro-machines.

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In fact, it would really, in the absence of these machines,

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have made the attendance here, Chris, really quite sparse.

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(Laughter)

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(Music)

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This is the FedEx delivery guy of the cell.

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This little guy is called the kinesin,

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and he pulls a sack that's full of brand new manufactured proteins

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to wherever it's needed in the cell --

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whether it's to a membrane, whether it's to an organelle,

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whether it's to build something or repair something.

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And each of us has about 100,000 of these things

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running around, right now,

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inside each one of your 100 trillion cells.

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So no matter how lazy you feel,

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you're not really intrinsically doing nothing.

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(Laughter)

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So what I want you to do when you go home

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is think about this, and think about how powerful our cells are.

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And think about some of the things

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that we're learning about cellular mechanics.

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Once we figure out all that's going on --

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and believe me, we know almost a percent of what's going on --

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once we figure out what's going on,

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we're really going to be able to have a lot of control

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over what we do with our health,

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with what we do with future generations,

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and how long we're going to live.

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And hopefully we'll be able to use this

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to discover more truth, and more beauty.

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(Music)

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But it's really quite amazing that these cells, these micro-machines,

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are aware enough of what the cell needs that they do their bidding.

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They work together. They make the cell do what it needs to do.

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And their working together helps our bodies --

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huge entities that they will never see -- function properly.

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Enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you.

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(Applause)