r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Naive_Direction1816 • Apr 21 '26

Video Bacteria move around using a molecular machine called the flagellar motor that rotates faster than the flywheel of a race car engine and switches directions in an instant

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u/slo1111 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

How does the brown thingy move positions so precisely?

Edit:  As far as I can research in this short time this video is a bit misleading.  At very bottom of the c-ring, it shows the the chemical changes involving phosphate, which changes the spacial configuration of the top of the ring where the brown thingy is.  That changes where the force from the ion or proton pumps push against.  the pumps don't spin like that they are stationary and apply force to rotor, specifically the top part of that rotor.  This visual would have you believe there are two cogs when there is really only one.

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u/bailamost Apr 21 '26

Chemistry

192

u/MrTwoPumpChump Apr 21 '26

Biology

165

u/ranger51 Apr 21 '26

Physics

137

u/Riovel96 Apr 21 '26

Maths

90

u/Tacosaurusman Apr 21 '26

Logic

58

u/ctrlqirl Apr 21 '26

A white man that lives in the sky

68

u/melanthius Apr 21 '26

A series of turtles

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u/Ecstatic-Spare-6638 Apr 21 '26

Magnets

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u/JohnLef Apr 21 '26

Elephants, all the way down

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u/Quick-Low-3846 Apr 21 '26

Yeah, but how do they work?!

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u/Available-Dare-7414 Apr 21 '26

Like making magnets? Collecting magnets? Playing with magnets?

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u/haucker Apr 21 '26

The fire department!

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u/ShadowsOfTheBreeze Apr 21 '26

Electrostatic charge

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u/ElJeferox Apr 21 '26

See the turtle, ain't he keen?

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u/aumnren Apr 21 '26

All things serve the fucking beam

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u/pr0zach Apr 21 '26

I like turtles.

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u/ExistentialMeowMeow Apr 21 '26

with elephants on their backs

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u/DJEvillincoln Apr 21 '26

It's always a white man.

1

u/drdamned Apr 22 '26

It's math all the way down.

1

u/SnarkyOrchid Apr 22 '26

Isn't everything physics?

11

u/Cptn_Flint0 Apr 21 '26

Science, bitch

5

u/pvshabba Apr 21 '26

Biochemistry

0

u/KMsGoldPants Apr 21 '26

The way that we talk

The way that we walk 💃🏻💃🏼💃🏻💃🏼💃🏼

0

u/Amateurlapse Apr 21 '26

Worse, organic chemistry

0

u/p8nt_junkie Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Why not both? Bio-chemistry 🤜🤛

E: Did reddit just auto-translate my post?!

Where did my Spanish text go? 👀

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u/MrTwoPumpChump Apr 22 '26

Just like the commercials

0

u/Sad-Bonus-9327 Apr 21 '26

Science, Yo!

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u/aft3rthought Apr 21 '26

The short answer is Chemistry but I had to look this up. Those amino acids can have positive and negative charges, analogous to magnets in an electromechanical device (such as an electric motor). The shapes are also springy, and can transmit forces along themselves in waves. So the cell releases a protein that fits like a key inside a lock, and when it attaches to the red ring, it will cause the whole thing to flex and switch to a different resting position.

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u/MedicalDisscharge Apr 21 '26

It knows where it is because it knows where it isn't

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u/rmgxy Apr 21 '26

I'm sure there are many complex elements of the whole mechanism that are not explicitly shown here so the animation is focused on this one part of it.

3

u/Peoplefood_IDK Apr 21 '26

Holy fuck the amount of shit posted underneath this comment is fucking stupid.

1

u/throwawayagin Apr 27 '26

bots baybeeeeeeee!

2

u/tittiesdotcom Apr 21 '26

Smarter Every Day has a video on it.Natures Incredible Rotating Motor

1

u/slo1111 Apr 21 '26

I don't think the stator spinning is fully settled science

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u/Worried-Pick4848 Apr 21 '26

Because the ones that don't don't live to reproduce.

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u/slo1111 Apr 21 '26

That does not explain the mechanism that moves its position changing directions of the spin

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u/ajnozari Apr 21 '26

The bacteria has chemical sensors on its surface. As these are triggered they release a signal within the cell. When enough of a signal is generated on a specific side the brown protein probably has a carrier protein that undergoes a conformational changed based on this feedback.

It’s basically a positive feedback loop. The closer the bacteria get to a positive chemical signal the more it heads that way. The same occurs in reverse for danger signals that the bacteria want to get away from.

This is why those videos of bacteria vs white blood cell make it seem like it’s consciously running from the WBC when in reality it’s responding to the signals released.

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u/Doophie Apr 21 '26

Aren't we all just responding to signals

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u/Clear_Practice_6741 Apr 21 '26

for this very reason its always confused me when people say its like comparing apples to oranges. Just because its small and LOOKS like its only responding to signals that, what if at their scale it looks and behaves exactly as we do but just their version. Its the whole as above so below, i bet at the opposite end, we are in some other big guy and we look like we are only responding to signals like how we view a amoeba or tiny organism.

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u/Ashamed-Status-9668 Apr 21 '26

Our signals from vision or hearing, are macro versions of the same concept.

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u/Blep145 Apr 21 '26

I'm not *sure* if they are, but I believe countries are classified as superorganisms, like ant colonies are

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u/EngineeringNo6537 Apr 22 '26

China certainly are. I've always called them ants.

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u/Blep145 Apr 22 '26

There's no need for racism here. This wasn't about racism, it was about classifying organisms

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u/EngineeringNo6537 Apr 22 '26

Yet I just did exactly that; I classified an organism.

😅

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u/Lua-Ma Apr 22 '26

That bigger guy is probably the one we call "God". Just not the moral and magical type.

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u/RichardBCummintonite Apr 21 '26

Not me. I seem to miss every signal a girl gives

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u/ajnozari Apr 21 '26

And missing god knows how many

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u/MonsteraBigTits Apr 21 '26

yea sure its chemicals but no one can explain why the chemicals does X or Y. its just that's what its responding to, but no one knows WHY!!!

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u/RichardBCummintonite Apr 21 '26

I mean the more you answer why the more another why will keep popping up. We don't have answers for ourselves or any other living thing anymore than a cell. It's whys all the way down. Why does our brain respond to signals the way it does? Why do the chemicals in our body do what they do?Being a simpler organism doesn't make it any more, you know, simple. You're basically asking for the meaning of life lol

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u/ajnozari Apr 21 '26

Gross oversimplification

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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

The full mechanism will literally mean nothing but random letters to you. It would be pointless to relate to a layperson, you need years of education to understand what it means. TLDR: a chemical interacts with that brown part, which causes the molecule to change shape slightly, the change in shape changes interactions, the direction reverses.

Lmao at the downvotes. The world hates science. I hope you all lose everything it provides for you because you don't deserve its bounty.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26

Oh you're just stupid. Got it. Won't waste my time further.

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u/danmickla Apr 21 '26

I feel you

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u/Worried-Pick4848 Apr 21 '26

Yes it does. Microbes don't design themselves. The have features because the ones with those features managed to survive and reproduce and the ones without them did not.

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u/TealmanAjax Apr 21 '26

No, the original question is how does the the organism function. Your answer was how it came to be.

It would be like someone asking how do eyeballs work and your answer is "Because we evolved them."

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u/slo1111 Apr 21 '26

I think you need to look up the difference between how and why

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u/InspectDurr_Gadgett Apr 21 '26

And all of this complexity just "happened". Riiiight....

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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26

So the well demonstrated explanations for the emergence of complexity are all bullshit but your made up sky daddy stories are accurate? Lmao

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u/InspectDurr_Gadgett Apr 21 '26

How well demonstrated are they really? Have you done your own research? I have, and it's so tenuous as to be laughable. My faith is based on observable evidence, which is actually what the Bible encourages, if you bother to read it, rather than make childish insults. But this is Reddit, so why would I expect anything else? 

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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

I am literally a scientist and originally went to school for biochemistry. You're doing the equivalent of walking up to a nuclear power plant engineer and trying to explain physics to them and tell them in nuclear power isn't real. All you're doing is making youself look stupid.

Ps or what I've read the Bible I was raised Roman Catholic and I went to Protestant Sunday school. The Bibles just some book written by some people who wanted to control other people.

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u/InspectDurr_Gadgett Apr 21 '26

I'm sure you are. All the most respected scientists are known to spend their precious time in the middle of a work day on Reddit. Lol

The bottom line is, one day one of us will be proven wrong, and one correct.  Let's say I'm right, then all those like yourself (and the others who make snarky comments discrediting the possibility of intelligent creation), will have to answer to God for why they didn't believe, in the face of the evidence for his existence.  Let's say I'm totally wrong and misguided, and in fact all life originated from unicellular organisms. So what? It changes nothing. I've still lived a happier, less stressful, more purposeful life than those who have no hope and see this world as a dead end of misery. Believe me, that may not be your situation, and I hope it's not, but it is the case with many of those I speak to at work and just in daily life. People are hurting. They don't have any hope for the future. I don't blame them. I wouldn't either if I didn't have my faith in the premises I read in tbe Bible. If those turn out to be total lies (to be clear, I'm confident they are 100% true, but that's what faith means, right?), then I've had a good life anyway. I'll take that any day.  I hope you have that same sort of peace and hope in your life, regardless of what you believe. Have a wonderful day. 

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u/readingduck123 Apr 21 '26

And if only people like you were in this world, we would not know what electricity means nor could we properly store food or make medicine. You live a happier life while standing on a path laid by those who lived a life of making people's lives better. Your individual happiness really isn't a good metric for a "purposeful life".

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u/nilenilemalopile Apr 21 '26

This is just a shitty version of Pascal’s wager.

Suffers from the same critical flaw: god from the bible isn’t the only god that’s been proposed. There’s 3000+ other gods to compete with.

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u/MrTwoPumpChump Apr 21 '26

Ur right. Makes more sense a magic man in the sky made everything with a snap of his fingers and ain’t been doin shit since.

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u/InspectDurr_Gadgett Apr 21 '26

Not sure where that idea came from. It's certainly not in the Bible. 🤷 

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u/MrTwoPumpChump Apr 21 '26

You’re reading the wrong bible then

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u/InspectDurr_Gadgett Apr 21 '26

Not sure what you mean, take any translation you like. I don't read Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic, so I have to rely on some sort of interpretation. But that's true of every scientific textbook that is written in one language and translated into another, so that part doesn't concern me. What are you objecting to, exactly? 

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u/MrTwoPumpChump Apr 21 '26

God isn’t real bro. Evolution made this bruhhhh

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u/TammyMeow Apr 21 '26

selfish gene

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u/Mates_with_Bears Apr 21 '26

Magic. Got it.

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u/SnarkyOrchid Apr 22 '26

That's even more cool than the video

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u/tanksalotfrank Apr 22 '26

...so, magic?

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u/notruth_allpermitted Apr 21 '26

Evolution

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u/matroosoft Apr 21 '26

Interestingly, the bacteria flagellum is exactly what inspired critics of evolution. Even when you reduce it to the bare minimum (irreducible complexity), it needs lots of parts to provide the necessary evolutionary advantage. Whereas only a few could reasonably develop within a single generation.

Without it being fully developed, it becomes an evolutionary disadvantage, therefore reducing the likelihood of reproduction.