Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Hollywood Meets Biology

"Dr. Lue is one of the pioneers of molecular animation, a rapidly growing field that seeks to bring the power of cinema to biology. Building on decades of research and mountains of data, scientists and animators are now recreating in vivid detail the complex inner machinery of living cells. “The ability to animate really gives biologists a chance to think about things in a whole new way,” said Janet Iwasa, a cell biologist who now works as a molecular animator at Harvard Medical School. (Molecular Animation)"

Last year in my AP Biology class, we actually watched an animation of the human cell made by Harvard's molecular animation department. The video showed every organelle in the cell moving and functioning the way it was described in our textbooks. As a visual learner this really helped me to understand and get an idea of what is going on inside every cell. These animations will be a great teaching tool for teachers and professors to use to help students who learn through visuals understand more concepts. The video we watched was really neat; they used bright and vibrant colors and had the organelles of the cell slinking and sliding their way around the cytoplasm.

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