(Disclaimer:The post starts on a tangent, but I promise there’s a point!)
I was trolling on Facebook the other day and came across a wonderfully moving series of photos, of musical instruments photographed from the inside…What!!
http://www.boredpanda.org/musical-instruments-photographed-from-inside/
Now sure exactly how these photographs were achieved or collected, but it’s a wonderful, thought-probing concept. How often have we looked at a violin, a cello, a guitar and marveled at its exterior beauty? Conversely, how often have we been able to look inside the instrument to marvel at the craftsmanship from another angle? This is a lesson in perspective, no doubt! I suppose it’s almost like looking at the MALDI-TOF or other boxy instruments and being impressed that it looks so sleek and large and science-y; but at the end of the day, the real magic of the MALDI-TOF (and other intimidating instruments) is in its interior parts that break down and help us analyze the protein sample; that’s what we should be ooh-ing and aah-ing about. Perhaps one day someone will figure out how students like ourselves can sit inside the machine and watch the machine as it does its work – it’s a perspective we’ve been lacking!
Extrapolating this further, I was trying to find some more artistic depictions of lipids and plasma membranes from various perspectives. Traditionally, diagrams and schematics have helped me understand just how the plasma membrane works, but it wasn’t until I saw a few videos by Nature or aesthetically pleasing pictures (below) of the membrane “landscape” (that is to say, a 3D-ish depiction that was NOT in a textbook!) that I began to appreciate how beautiful and brilliant the membrane is. From this perspective, I could get a big picture idea, start to imagine the plasma membrane not as a dividing line but as a very dynamic landscape, and I think that has made all the difference. I had some trouble finding lots of WOW-worthy artistic depictions of the plasma membrane, but I know there must be things out there, so I will keep looking and update this post as I see fit. I know there must be more lurking out there besides the one posted below!
(Source: Nature.com)
That is a wonderful image of showing us what the membrane is like. Most of the time when we learn about the plasma membrane, we only see the organic structure of the proteins that play important roles in the membrane. However, we don’t really see how much space the protein is occupying or what is the ratio of the protein to the membrane and its interactions with other proteins on the surface.