Strange Molecular Structures Inside Our Cells Hint at Origins of Life

[@chuckster255]

I admire your ability to distill down technological jargon into information the average non-technical person can understand. Thank you Anton.

[@GD-lv8cc]

A modern-era Carl Sagan!

[@yvonnemiezis5199]

I really agree👍

[@erkinalp]

@@GD-lv8cc no, that's Neil DeGrasse Tyson

[@sdw2911]

My grandfather recently passed away from Parkinson’s with lewy, very cool to hear there’s some good work being done that could lead to understanding this better. it’s a truly terrible disease.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

Medicine is one of those areas where we should be making much greater strides in, but with risk models especially, it's completely plagued by pc nonsense

[@coweatsman]

@@TheThreatenedSwan It's getting harder to make great strides. More PhDs and more money return a diminishing of benefit contrary to all the media hype. Hype aimed at raising funds from greedy gullible venture capitalist or as marketing for old drugs rejigged into new patents and hyped as "breakthroughs".

[@CucuExploziv]

Thank you for your awesome work!

[@SirCharles12357]

Mind blown again! A new kind of membraneless organelle, which condensates when needed via RNA instruction!!!! Just wow!!

[@nightknght]

just like me ex girlfirend

[@nycbearff]

I'm 73, so I have some perspective on the advances in biology (and the other sciences) in the last few decades. What we know today is mind blowingly different from what we knew when I was young - and what we will know in another 30 or 40 years will make what we know today look extremely primitive. We think we know a lot now - and yes, we do - but it is still just a very small part of all there is to know. Yes, this is fascinating. And there's more to learn about cells and their interactions than we can currently imagine. Whenever you hear someone say "this is how cells work" or "this is how the brain works" - laugh at their hubris, value your own not knowing about these things, and cultivate patience for the results of future research. "We don't know much about that yet" is the most productive attitude you can have about most scientific topics you encounter. People who can't handle not knowing are not suited to any kind of work in teaching or scientific fields.

[@ray1956]

I’m also a 73 year old Biology major. The knowledge we have now dwarfs what we knew in the 70’s. Amazing 👍🏿🎅🏿🎅🏿🧑🏿‍💻👨🏿‍⚕️

[@markharder3676]

78 y.o,. here. Not only that, but biochemical experimentation has always been done using purified components such as proteins and RNA in water solutions. Whereas the interior of a living cell is anything but watery and pure. We need to know how proteins and enzymes interact with each other and with small molecules in the crowded gel that is the cell interior. Clusters of functional proteins may be how proteins find each other when simple diffusion is inhibited in the high-viscosity environments of cytoplasm, nucleoplasm, etc. Yes, the subject is extremely important and it looks like it could completely revolutionize the subjects of biochemistry and cell biology.

[@jigglie8077]

I try to explain to my grandmother that the things about "good health" 60 years ago was nearly all just political gambits and did NOT actually improve health.. she refuses to believe me and will probly die thinking the world is wrong. the advances in science are always fun to hear about and im so happy that things have moved past what i can/have guessed!! new amzing works being found and made every few days? yes yes yes! i love hearing about it all. :D

[@bjdefilippo447]

Wow! This is huge! The promise from this research is impressive. I'd love to know how these organelles function differently depending on the nature and extent of the stress they experience. I almost wish I wasn't retired, but at least now I have time to read the literature. 😊

[@daveknight8410]

Merry Christmas all. Don't forget to like Anton's video 😊

[@stevenkarnisky411]

I often "like" Anton's video before I even watch it!

[@charliekelland7564]

Thanks for the reminder, I had actually forgotten. I wish we could automate that!

[@markharwood7573]

This looks like a serious leap forward. RNA does stuff that apparently nobody expected. You still have to suspect that there is a whole long way to go before we understand cells.

[@adambarlev8992]

Ok I first heard about stress granules in a talk about influenza infection and how cells decide to either give up and apoptosis or stress granule their mRNA and survive. Also the same time I learned about 'cap snatching'. Look it up... You'll feel violated for sure. Ef you influenza, don't be stealing my caps!

[@justinpyle3415]

A long way indeed.

[@stefanblue660]

AI is massively overrated in this point.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

​@@stefanblue660 wat. Not at all. Just like AI models are important for accurately distinguishing between different brains, it's very useful when it comes to rna and proteina

[@williammentink]

Perhaps RNA is the core to all enzymes.

[@gastgeschenk]

I really love how this connects all of us.

[@RobertBrown-i4r]

Thanks again Anton for proving why the sciences matter -- happy holidays to you and your family

[@windfoil1000]

Wow, thanks for wading through all of that, Anton. Super interesting and a bit complicated but you did a great job of it.

[@alfredogonzalez8735]

I was very excited to see a Dr. Keith Dunker's paper on your video! He taught a few lectures on disordered proteins in my Bioinformatics class and he talked about his origin of life work and i actually made sure to tell him that i thought that work was amazing ant he also felt he was really onto something!

[@joetaylor486]

Wow, absolutely fascinating. This feels like a significant leap forward in molecular biology.

[@andrerodon3921]

Absolutely fabulous! Our understanding of cell biology has grown incredibly since I was in school studying biochemistry.

[@thachnguyen861]

I loving the way he pronounces 'Hypothesis' I love it!

[@mohsin10047]

Thanks!

[@redhedkev1]

Anton, how do you keep on top of all of this stuff? Another great video. Thank you.

[@Devo491]

Thanks for another mind-blowing post, Anton! Biology is immensely complex, thanks to billions of years of experimenting, and Science has plenty to work on.

[@anitapeura3517]

Thanks so much for all your work Anton, keeping us well-informed and engaged with science, and showing that science is not the static monolith so many assume it is. You show it at its best! Happy holiday season to you and your family!

[@BernieA01]

Danke!

[@stevedrane2364]

Wow . . This is incredible work, thank you for updating us. .

[@mt-mg7tt]

Fascinating video . Merry Xmas, Happy Solstice etc, Anton et al.

[@Anthro006]

Damn good reporting! Thank you! I'm wondering if you might be able to connect and explain how this might relate to and support cytoskeletal formation, intrinsic microtubule build and reduce. Seems like seriously close to an explosion of understanding!!!

[@jimcurtis9052]

Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. 🙂

[@pikesplitman]

Very interesting. The condensation process has been known for a while in the physics community. I did related experiments in the 90's at Cambridge. Currently developing new methods for isolating spectral signals from sections of biopolymers for disease diagnosis. This will inspire new research. Thanks for the heads up.

[@thachnguyen861]

Hello Wonderful People!

[@wayneharrison]

🖖👽

[@sinecure45]

Hello Anton, I mentioned in a comment to another video that I helped organize a conference at the Strathcona back in 1999, together with Dr. Vali, Eddie Chan and Gitta Jensen. One of the people Gitta and I wanted to speak at the conference was a very old biologist named Bernard Grad, who had written his doctoral thesis on the roof of the Strathcona in around 1950. His thesis is that organized life requires a protected environmnent and that such an environment, a membrane, could form under certain chemical conditions. Dr. Grad was too old to attend the event, but one person who was not quite too old was Lida Mattman of Wayne State university. SHe wrote the book on Cell Wall Deficient Forms, taking a somewhat different approach. The conference was titled Pleomorphic Organisms in Health and Disease.

[@Alondro77]

Cells are so vastly more complex than anyone even guessed 40 years ago, when I started learning about them!

[@BryanTarinLozaMusic]

Anton, i admire your communication skills. Thank you for this content!

[@greggwilliamson]

I had no real concept of how many different living things have made a home in every single cell in my body. I almost feel violated. Alien abduction? Why? just move in here with everybody else.

[@coweatsman]

We are host to everything which give us the illusion of existing.

[@TheVeganarchism]

The terms “my body” is pretty much meaningless. To whom does that body exist, when the body itself is a collection of other bodies?

[@greggwilliamson]

@@TheVeganarchism That may be true. BUT. Until those little bastards start paying my bills it's MY BODY.

[@leonardgibney2997]

More great info from wonderful person Anton.

[@davisje011]

The more of these you have, the stronger in the force you are.

[@jamesleatherwood5125]

He did it! He did it! He said mitochondria without that dadgum other phrase! Woot! Go Anton, Go Anton, Go Anton, Go! Yay! Pioneer the way!

[@jambec144]

What was he saying before?

[@jamesleatherwood5125]

@jambec144 not him per se. But hes the only one and only in this video that didnt immediately say "powerhouse of the cell". He still told you what it was, but it was refreshing to hear "where the cell is known to make energy" over the cliche. And i just commented on one of his videos yesterday, though the video itself might have been part of a megacomp, or at least and older vid whe he DID say "the powerhouse of the cell" saying at some point i was gonna make a video saying the word mitochondria without saying that catchphrase right after just to say that it was done once! But then Anton went and did it the next day! Cause hes awesome!

[@FuManchu5ltr]

Anton’s Midi-chlorian count is off the chart.

[@eccoweaver]

At 3:12 when you first mention Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, the visual shown features a molecular truncated icosahedron (like a wireframe model of a soccer ball/football). I find these and related geometrical forms very fascinating and fun to model. What is that shape or form or figure referred to as in a biomolecular setting? Or does it represent a number of possible things, perhaps depending on individual chemistry? Does it/do they have a particular function or set of functions? The same shape appears in another visual at 10:45 Also at ~10:15, the revelation that functional solids can be formed without membranes or other protective elements is a bit mind blowing. Very cool!

[@woreno]

Another great video

[@dbabdbbbghbb]

Hey I caught this one early today. Love the content. Been watching for years, if I miss a day I always catch back up. You’re legitimately the most dedicated creator on the platform.

[@john-or9cf]

I’m a very old physicist - the neutrino was the new kid on the block when I was in college - and now that I’m old and a new great-grandfather, I have time to muse: how the hell did we actually get here? Not from the primordial soup but from two cells from two people getting together, multiply in the proper way where one set of newly created cells decides to become a liver, another set becomes a brain, etc, etc. all in the right places and in the right quantity properly interconnected, etc…yeah, I know DNA, genes, but what is the magic that happens under the hood?

[@blakeloh]

That would be God.

[@re11ik96]

​@@blakelohdoes god also makes poo when you go to the loo?

[@peppermintgal4302]

I think that at some point, the loss of rigid cell walls in eukaryotes allowed them to develop strategies where they could fuse to combine genomes. As for the magic that causes the development of the body, there's an emerging field of bioelectricity that studies some of the behavior that structures organs. A lot of the machinery involved is repurposed from cellular sensory apparatuses, mostly the ones that detect ions and electrical activity, that cells would use to figure out where to go when they were single cellular, (to avoid predators, to find food, etc..) I'd also look at the evolution of sea sponges and tunicates.

[@technokicksyourass]

Concentration gradients of signal molecules. It's easier to understand if you take a look at the first couple of generations of cells during embryo development. But essentially the idea is.. the embryo divides into a ball of cells, then chemical signals emitted from one pole of embryo form a concentration gradient, and genes are activated/suppressed conditional on the concentration amount. This triggers cell differentiation + the emission of new chemical signals and sets up new concentration gradients, which leads to more gene activation/suppression.. and so on. It's basically a computer algorithm, but running on biological/chemical substrate.

[@stargazer5784]

There are probably biologists that have similar quandaries about how it is that physicists are able to construct a device, that uses only a few pounds of fissile material, to create an explosion that flattens an entire city. However, I don't know of any biologists that view their function as being something magical.

[@BastilsBlather818]

Evolution starts as a condensate cool, great video 🙂

[@suecollins357]

Thanks again ❤

[@placidpaddler]

I dove deep into these granules in the context of HIV RNAs, as the virus takes advantage of these processes in order to expresses its genome, translate the proteins it encodes, and package it all into new particles in seemingly all forms of cellular stress, including those which it induces. Really fascinating stuff!

[@timothydeyoung9689]

I agree that if this pans out that there could/should be a Nobel in their future. Good work Anton!

[@thirdeye147]

I have had Huntington's disease for a few years now. Of course my my mother had it. Both me and my older brother have ity sister doesn't have.

[@global_nomad.]

everytime we think we have understood something complex, we discover our idea of complexity was niave, and another scale of complexity lies within

[@brianorca]

Wonder how this relates to the "junk DNA" (i.e. DNA that we don't understand yet) and how much of it codes for RNA structures like this instead of protein.

[@rajmudumbai7434]

The original central dogma of biology apparently needs to change from DNA -> RNA-> Protein-> Phenotype to DNA RNA-> Control-> Protein-> Phenotype for including control function and to show the two-way interaction between DNA and RNA, according to a biologist. In the light of new findings such as this, it might change yet again to reflect the fast changing landscape of biology. This channel is doing great work to bring enthusiasts like me to the forefront of what's happening in science.

[@KelliAnnWinkler]

Wow! Need to send this to all those people that claim the "science is settled". Great work...thank you.

[@paulokoeberle6226]

Hey Anton, YOU DID IT !!! You found the beginning!

[@amanitamuscaria7500]

the organelles are incredible. The more I learn, the more I am mind blown by them.

[@Alexey-e5b]

Feels funky to live at times when fear of death is not only about existence but FOMO all the cool knowledge yet to be discovered.

[@aleksanderpopov5060]

Nice and interesting quick video, большое спасибо тебе бро!

[@Sesso20]

Its mindblowing how complex single cells can be and even more that all the organelles themselves are as complex as the whole thing. When you said, structure becomes function it made me think quite hard, because we can see this principle in many other places too. Its very fascinating how RNA can protect itself via forming these clusters - I eventually read the paper although I am not a molecular biology major - but this is astonishing - I wonder what the chemo-physical parameters are that make RNA transform itself.

[@robertfindley921]

Keep going biologists, geneticists and scientists! Everything you learn through hypothesis, experimentation and peer review is gold. Don't waste your time debating with theologians.

[@stevenkarnisky411]

As we zero in on how life began are we going to start finding instances of life beginning? The right conditions must occur more than once on this planet. Even if new life cannot compete with what is already here and gets rapidly eliminated, the evidence seems to point to multiple recurrences. Thank you Anton!

[@chrischase7300]

All I can say is Wow.

[@MakerGrigio]

Hello Anton, Long time fan here. Can you please turn on auto generated audio translation? (audio track) I have family in Chile that I would like to send your videos to, and having your voice automatically translated to Spanish would _really_ help them. THANK YOU! Stay wonderful!

[@josdelijster4505]

Thank you Anton very very interesting

[@weegiewarbler]

Are these "Lewy Bodies" as in the dementia (á la Robin Williams)?

[@annemaria5126]

So another super-interesting topic for new students of all sorts to dive in.

[@markmcphee6996]

Small correction: the phase transition is more accurately described as starting from a solvated phase (not liquid) en route to the condensate.

[@Jagzeplin]

what exactly causes a cell to stress?

[@skizzlezz359]

So what I'm hearing Anton, is that we started out life as a completely different life-form, and slowly transformed and even took over another life-form to become us.

[@cgaumerd]

Doris Loh and Russell Reiter recent publications on the role of melatonin on the phase separation of biomolecular condensates are a game changer. High dose melatonin has profound impact.

[@MCsCreations]

Sweet. When anyone discovers why I'm here... Let me know. 😊 (I mean the existence, not Anton's video.)

[@Briggsby]

Random chance as an emergent property of the universe. You have no meaning, no purpose, no goal beyond what you set for yourself. There's no grand design beyond what we choose, and your choices will ripple throughout time regardless of how small. Your purpose is self-designed, and self-assigned. Choose wisely.

[@MCsCreations]

@Briggsby I couldn't have said better myself. Well done! 😊 (But you realize it was a joke, right? 😬)

[@charliekelland7564]

"You are here to perpetuate life. You get to choose what that means" ... Chews Whys Lee [ancient philosopher]

[@jengathoughts]

I remember looking at this under a microscope, most fun I had in biology.

[@janibeg3247]

reminds me of my molecular biology clases. Except back the, a lot of this stuff was Black Box

[@charliekelland7564]

11:09 I wonder if the model of 'how life started in the beginning' is hiding in plain sight. Perhaps this process is exactly how it got going and happens every moment in our cells. When embryos develop they go through various morphologies, such as those of fish, before becoming human-looking, as if the whole process of evolution has to be replicated in order to 'climb the ladder of complexity' before reaching the latest form. By analogy, I wonder if a similar process takes place inside our cells all the time - as if the RNA has to repeat the processes that started life in order to reach the most recent stage of evolution. 12:02 On the contrary, coming at almost the same time as the advent of AGI (OpenAI o3 model), this portends the dawning of a new age of understanding and incredible scientific advances. I think there will be practical benefits sooner than you may think.

[@megret1808]

It never ceases to amaze that after five hundred years of scientific inquiry, we are still discovering things like micro tubes and organelles

[@mykofreder1682]

A good theory and increasing size of life. It creates clumps and by chance it functions and to have a certain function it requires a certain size like an electric circuit. For instance, a virus is much smaller than a bacterium and you might think the smaller RNA object came first, but given the efficiency of RNA the bacteria are about the size package you need for their function. And it is possible the function occurs in the clumps then the membrane, feeding, and reproductive function occurs by chance.

[@nickwilson589]

Perhaps the reaction to stress is a means not to over adapt. Like if you sink your ship and end up swimming for several hrs your cells won't over react by trying to make for some kind of adaptation to prolonged periods in the water?

[@JeroenvanGutsem-u7e]

Have ocean black smoker vents been sampled for abiotic RNA production ? The smoking vents them selves allow temperature gradient driven chemical reactions and as the growth in height and thickness or branch out different heat and pressure parametres create a very dynamical dear i say evolutionary chemical lab with a lot of test tubes and several million years to cook up something interestin like RNA.

[@JeroenvanGutsem-u7e]

I would like to see black smokers deeply simulated on our modern supercomputers to see what substances they cook in a ten thousand years computed in 20 minutes. Discover feedbackloops etc.

[@frinoffrobis]

nice try, but life started out in space.. its a lot more time

[@C_In_Outlaw3817]

@@frinoffrobis I think the building blocks of life were out there for sure, but I think cells arose on earth tbh

[@tohellorbarbados4902]

"Condensate" is not a verb, it's a noun. The verb is "condense". Things condense; water condenses on a window to form condensation, which is a condensate.

[@roymarsh8077]

This feels like one of Anton's more important posts. Which is already saying something.

[@TedToal_TedToal]

Amazing!

[@SapienSpace]

Interesting, I think Yoshinori Ohsumi won a Nobel Prize for something similar, when cells are stressed something (lysosomes?) are activated that sacrifice the weaker cells and turns them into food. It is called autophagy.

[@oneeyejack2]

I think it may be a new type of catalyzing : maybe they use crystal structure to force or facilitate certain reactions or molecules configurations... like using the forces involved in a state transition of some molecules to manipulate other molecules trapped inside the crystal... in that case, these formations would only be transitory... like 3D molds forming around molecules to get a configuration or reaction and then the mold dissipate to liberate the results. This is so fascinating ! I also think we should give up this idea of "evolution innovation" when we look at how things are done inside the cell, or at least not confuse our understanding of what "can happen" with the tree of life... everything that RNA can do, as molecules, would probably appear randomly very early in life.. in other words, if this type of reaction or organization mechanism is possible, it always was. Life can invent "new molecules" but laws of chemistry don't evolve.

[@alejandrotroche6381]

Thanks for inspiring and setting the example in hardworking content creation while keeping your humble and wise throughout your journey. And wow you're English is better everyday

[@remotepinecone]

I would not class these as organelles they seem to be more like cell structure components similar to microtubules. And other things that exist in all cells including bacteria do too Except the other end of structure really sloppy lol

[@MarkAhrens-HeritageFilms]

I want an "As always, bye bye." shirt!

[@GadZookz]

The fact of the matter is if I was an organelle I’d insist on my own membrane. Make no bones about it. If you are under stress you don’t want toned up as a condensate. 9:21 No way!

[@scott-hr3hd]

Interesting. One more link on how physics leads to biology.

[@l3ll5l]

As usual I recommend the book evolution and design logic and evidence by ammar adil it is with academic references and the author made an excellent job. After reading most people would want to share it like I do its only 170 or so pages

[@forlottelse2]

I love watching your videos. The further you break it down the more complex biochemistry becomes. You’re lending great credibility to the idea of intelligent design. Thank you Anton. Ты просто являешься чудесным человеком! человек

[@Roust7]

If if RNA was precursor of life on earth, there must be a cell that uses RNA as source of genetic information, but so far only some viruses do that. Viruses could not be a precursor of cells because they use cell as a mean for their replication.

[@C_In_Outlaw3817]

There could be a type of RNA-based cell out there we haven’t discovered yet. But the fact of the matter is DNA is a much more stable compound than rna and it’s thought that in the primordial environment of early earth dna life forms that used rna and proteins for complex reactions outcompeted earlier ‘models’ so to speak. Therefore, it’s reasonable to suspect that rna life forms no longer exist since dna life is so much better at thriving. Viruses , yes, are a bit more complicated. We don’t know how they quite fit into the narrative, but there are theories out there. But as far as _cells_ go you can almost think of things from a Darwinian standpoint. But rna world at the end of the day is just a theory. It might be dead wrong lol

[@JohnAlbertRigali]

I no longer accept the life-from-primordial-soup theory, but nonetheless this is a wondrous discovery about the formation of eukaryotic (and prokaryotic?) life forms.

[@ThatGuy-ht9sp]

Life is a phase change? Sounds kinda cool ;-)

[@SOOKIE42069]

I wonder if these can explain a lot of the autoimmune conditions that today we just dump in the Idiopathic bucket.

[@C_In_Outlaw3817]

I wonder if stressful circumstances induce protein signaling within cells which would allow for an environment that would form these condensates more easily. Like I wonder how the cell regulates these condensate organelles .

[@C_In_Outlaw3817]

I also wonder if miRNAs are involved in these condensates .

[@montyskeetch4082]

RNA World!

[@Atok595]

TNA is better 🤫

[@davidharvey3743]

As we get smarter,we get new questions!

[@galeahad9663]

Please download the Mitochondria 2 video

[@smizmar8]

This reminds me of how the tardigrade survival mechanism works.

[@bigstickpilot]

If I were entering grad school today I’d choose this field to work in

[@Shivaho]

Everything is Energy & Information ... the Universe Talking to Itself

[@1943vermork]

Wondering if Prions “mad cow disease” are also in the same category of those

[@wmontg7871]

My thoughts exactly

[@C_In_Outlaw3817]

In the same category as these organelle condensates? Not quite. Prions are misfolded proteins that build up in cell structures . They’re countless and aren’t broken down via ubiquitin easily either. They end up building up in neurons and causing diseases like cruetzfeld-Jakob

[@wmontg7871]

@@C_In_Outlaw3817 thats more information than I have seen in a long time. Thanks

[@halverde6373]

Scary thought is the known universe reflects this. We may be in the process of becoming. Chicken and egg analogy. Microcosm / Macrocosm ?

[@stopbeingsoweirdstill]

Thank you again for this information. There is so much we don’t know about our own genetics.

[@januszlepionko]

So that discovery means that cells are more complex than people thought before.

[@katestramenos929]

Kinda makes sense why humans are the way they are. A bunch of our coding is just *use resources to multiply

[@philliplamoureux9489]

Super!!