Nature's Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!) - Smarter Every Day 300

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Finally, an explanation for how Tails' helicopter butt works in Sonic the Hedgehog

Excuse me while I engineerify your biology.🤣

The dithering sound effect was spot on 😂

I’m studying molecular biology: it’s so so so cool that you have started covering these topics, I find biology to be one of the most fascinating parts of the universe

300 episodes!!! Congratulations on the huge milestone!

There is also the ATP-Syntase, Which is also a motor that uses the protongradient to spin and it converts the spin to chemical energy

Someone already mentioned that the reason its so efficient is friction, heat and physics works differently at the molecular level.

FINALY! someone reviewing this topic, last info i found about that was 10 years ago....

I love it when research scientists on the cutting edge of their field are able to communicate their topic in simple terms

No new word is needed, we already have "bacteriostatic". If you're going down this path, you should also do a video about protein pumps, the mechanism that creates that hydrogen ion gradient in the first place and underpins the metabolism of ALL living organisms.

Knows is a bad term. A computer doesn't know it is running a program. It's like saying your hair knows to grow. It just does. We are conscious, but that does mean we make our hair grow.

The thing is, calling a biomechanical motor “complicated” is strange based on everything else we know about life. A brain is complicated. The immune system is complicsted. An entire organism working in unison is complicated. A little motor feels like the least wild thing about life. Put another way, inventing the steam engine is pretty cool, but humanity being able to globally communicate, innovate, and utilize that steam engine is even more crazy. The steam engine is simple in comparison.

If by debate you mean intelligent design, then no. This motor doesn’t move the needle in either direction. 1:36

Very glad to see this video. The molecular machines inside our cells are absolutely mind-blowing.

Those aren't molecules... That is grandma crochet project that got outa hand. It would be pretty awesome to have a flagella drive outboard for a boat.

To add a small bit of commentary on the bacteria itself: it doesn’t “know” how to turn its motors after receiving signals using its receptors. It has evolved over time to utilize sensor inputs effectively. It does not rationally think about the best option, it instead has just evolved to take advantage of a chance-based game. Bacterial life is a massive chance-based game. Say the bacteria is in a location, collecting a particular amount of food, say [x] concentration of food around it. Let’s say there’s areas around it with higher than [x] food, and areas with lower. The bacteria doesn’t actively think it wants to better is position, but it can by leveraging this chance-based game in its favor. The flagellum spins either CW or CCW: CW results in “tumbling” motion (takes a lot of random turns, effectively meaning it stays relatively stationary), and CCW results in “running” motion (goes straight). This difference is possible because the flagellum is only viable as a stable propellor when it spins CCW, due to fluid dynamics and how it’s constructed (think a fan: spin the fan the wrong way, and you’ll suck air instead of blow air). The bacteria’s evolutionary secret? Make it a bit more likely to run when you go to areas with lower or similar concentration of food (encouraging travel), and make it a bit more likely to tumble when you are in an area of higher food concentration than before (encouraging staying stationary). It is called “run-and-tumble chemotaxis” and has many info website pages about it. If you play out this random simulation, the bacteria will tend towards higher concentrations, as is the nature of this chance-based event. It is just more likely to venture towards higher concentrations, which is a system of detections (by receptors) that follow a chain of activations in the cell that tell the flagellum to act accordingly. It was more beneficial for a bacteria to have a better-functioning flagellum and better-functioning flagellum activation system, so it slowly, through millions of years, evolved the very complicated means by which what we see today is possible, with full-fledged motors in bacteria.

What I find really interesting that you didn’t even touch on was how closely it is modelled on things that we have invented that we use in every day life.. we have ring and pinions in differentials, gearbox, winches, we have stators and rotors in electronics like DC motors etc, we have jet engines with turbines & impellers yet these things have been floating around in goop for millions of years.

ATP synthase makes us all tick, you should look at this enzyme too!

When you see something successful in nature, like the flagellar motor, you are not seeing all the failures or inferior versions because those mutations died off as the more successful version beat it to obtaining fuel or reproductive partners, or the inferior version failed to avoid predation. The success is the only thing we see now, but it isn't the only "design" that ever existed. You could say it'd be like looking at Edison and going "Can't believe this guy just designed the lightbulb first try without ever failing."