John-Liebler-Kinesin-Protein-Walking

As my workload allows, I plan on spending some time revisiting many of the subjects from The Inner Life of the Cell, and where better to start than with a new version of this guy.

The kinesin motor protein was a real scene stealer in Inner Life, although it wasn’t even in the original treatment for the short. The original plan was to omit the motor protein in the vesicle shots, but when I saw Graham Johnson’s animation of the way a Kinesin takes a step from April 2000 (below), I secretly went ahead and modeled one of my own, animated a walk cycle for it, and added it into the vesicle shot. After I showed it to Dr. Viel, it not only got into the animation, it got several more shots as well.

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Now everyone’s  got a kinesin in their animation, most recently, the sparkly star stuff ones seen in episode 2 of the new COSMOS.

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But, my favorite kinesin animation has to be this one, by the Hoogenraad lab at the Utrecht University, and not just because they named the kinesin after me. (Not really, but it’s a fantastic animation just the same.) Check it out.

Kinesin protein 3D animated GIF by John Liebler

Animated GIF of Kinesin Protein walking.
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