[BASSLER:] Everything that you can actually see with your eye is just the smallest sliver of life on this earth. Most of life is invisible. We still have this idea that we're the most central feature of earth, and it's the humans that are the bystanders. The microbes are doing the work. [ANDERSON:] What do you do when you see things no one has ever seen before? L-A-Y. Lay. Ooo. VEN. They pronounce it with a 'V.' Who-keh. Leeuwenhoek. [PALM:] Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek. He was a haberdasher in the city of Delft in the Netherlands. [ANDERSON:] And why his curiosity found an outlet in microscopes, that is just lost to history. We really don't know. [PALM:] The quality of his microscope was superb. He made some 540 small instruments, and only a few of them he showed to visitors. He never told anyone how he made his lenses. [ANDERSON:] Robert Hooke, in England. He wrote this wonderful book, Micrographia [PALM:] The first observations of the small world with lenses. [ANDERSON:] One of the first things Leeuwenhoek did was to look at things that Hooke had looked at. There was the stinger of a bee. The leg I believe of a louse. Singular of lice. But he saw some things that Hooke didn't see because his lenses were better. It was summertime. It was August. The days are so long that you get a lot of algae growth on water. He called it "green clouds." Curious again, he has what he called a glass vessel-- you know, a jar probably-- and he filled it with the water. The next day, he put it under his lens, and what he saw was green streaks. Among this, was all these little animals. And these things were a whole lot smaller, like 1,000 times smaller than anything he had ever seen before. And I think the line is, "I confess I could not but wonder at it." [PALM:] Leeuwenhoek called them in Dutch "diertgens." And "diertgens," that's the diminutive of the word "dier." [ANDERSON:] Dier. D-I-E-R. [PALM:] Which is the Dutch word for "animal." [ANDERSON:] What Leeuwenhoek called them was "little animals." [PALM:] This was all so new. The word "microorganism" did not exist at the time. The word "bacteria" is from the 19th century. [ANDERSON:] And that strikes me as Adam in the Garden of Eden who in Genesis named all the animals. It was just a brand new world and he was the first person in it. [PALM:] He wrote a letter to the Royal Society, one of the first organizations to practice experimental science. [ANDERSON:] And they were going "Oh my heavens, what is this?" [PALM:] At first they didn't believe it. [ANDERSON:] Finally, the other members of the Royal Society were also able to see it, and the rest is history. [PALM:] And so he discovered many things. [ANDERSON:] Sperm, red blood cells, protozoa, and bacteria. [PALM:] Which nobody had ever seen before. [ANDERSON:] He is the first person to see everything he looked at for fifty years. [BASSLER:] Van Leeuwenhoek wanted to see these things, well he saw them. But now we get, most of life is microbial. You look at the tree of life, and only this tiny little part is every single thing you've seen. Every higher organism is covered, inside and out, with bacteria. And humans would not be alive if these little 24/7 partners weren't giving us all these genes and proteins that our own genomes don't encode. And they have all kinds of fabulous behaviors. Vibrio harveyi is a marine bacterium, it looks like a sausage, and it's very fast. Vibrio means vibrate. And what is amazing, is that if one watches them go from a single cell to a number of cells, all of the bacteria, in unison, start glowing in the dark. By studying this bioluminescent organism, we discovered that bacteria can communicate, using a molecular language. We used to think that social behaviors were the purview of higher organisms. What we now understand is that bacteria were probably the first organisms on this earth to ever communicate with one another. We're always looking at an unknown world. We're driven by our ignorance, and we're driven by the idea that the world must be more complex than what we understand right now. And that's enough inspiration to do an experiment. [BASSLER:] Can you imagine being the first one to see your sperm swimming around? That would be a scary thing, right?
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction to Biology2h 40m
- 2. Chemistry3h 40m
- 3. Water1h 26m
- 4. Biomolecules2h 23m
- 5. Cell Components2h 26m
- 6. The Membrane2h 31m
- 7. Energy and Metabolism2h 0m
- 8. Respiration2h 40m
- 9. Photosynthesis2h 49m
- 10. Cell Signaling59m
- 11. Cell Division2h 47m
- 12. Meiosis2h 0m
- 13. Mendelian Genetics4h 41m
- Introduction to Mendel's Experiments7m
- Genotype vs. Phenotype17m
- Punnett Squares13m
- Mendel's Experiments26m
- Mendel's Laws18m
- Monohybrid Crosses16m
- Test Crosses14m
- Dihybrid Crosses20m
- Punnett Square Probability26m
- Incomplete Dominance vs. Codominance20m
- Epistasis7m
- Non-Mendelian Genetics12m
- Pedigrees6m
- Autosomal Inheritance21m
- Sex-Linked Inheritance43m
- X-Inactivation9m
- 14. DNA Synthesis2h 27m
- 15. Gene Expression3h 20m
- 16. Regulation of Expression3h 31m
- Introduction to Regulation of Gene Expression13m
- Prokaryotic Gene Regulation via Operons27m
- The Lac Operon21m
- Glucose's Impact on Lac Operon25m
- The Trp Operon20m
- Review of the Lac Operon & Trp Operon11m
- Introduction to Eukaryotic Gene Regulation9m
- Eukaryotic Chromatin Modifications16m
- Eukaryotic Transcriptional Control22m
- Eukaryotic Post-Transcriptional Regulation28m
- Eukaryotic Post-Translational Regulation13m
- 17. Viruses37m
- 18. Biotechnology2h 58m
- 19. Genomics17m
- 20. Development1h 5m
- 21. Evolution3h 1m
- 22. Evolution of Populations3h 52m
- 23. Speciation1h 37m
- 24. History of Life on Earth2h 6m
- 25. Phylogeny40m
- 26. Prokaryotes4h 59m
- 27. Protists1h 6m
- 28. Plants1h 22m
- 29. Fungi36m
- 30. Overview of Animals34m
- 31. Invertebrates1h 2m
- 32. Vertebrates50m
- 33. Plant Anatomy1h 3m
- 34. Vascular Plant Transport2m
- 35. Soil37m
- 36. Plant Reproduction47m
- 37. Plant Sensation and Response1h 9m
- 38. Animal Form and Function1h 19m
- 39. Digestive System10m
- 40. Circulatory System1h 57m
- 41. Immune System1h 12m
- 42. Osmoregulation and Excretion50m
- 43. Endocrine System4m
- 44. Animal Reproduction2m
- 45. Nervous System55m
- 46. Sensory Systems46m
- 47. Muscle Systems23m
- 48. Ecology3h 11m
- Introduction to Ecology20m
- Biogeography14m
- Earth's Climate Patterns50m
- Introduction to Terrestrial Biomes10m
- Terrestrial Biomes: Near Equator13m
- Terrestrial Biomes: Temperate Regions10m
- Terrestrial Biomes: Northern Regions15m
- Introduction to Aquatic Biomes27m
- Freshwater Aquatic Biomes14m
- Marine Aquatic Biomes13m
- 49. Animal Behavior28m
- 50. Population Ecology3h 41m
- Introduction to Population Ecology28m
- Population Sampling Methods23m
- Life History12m
- Population Demography17m
- Factors Limiting Population Growth14m
- Introduction to Population Growth Models22m
- Linear Population Growth6m
- Exponential Population Growth29m
- Logistic Population Growth32m
- r/K Selection10m
- The Human Population22m
- 51. Community Ecology2h 46m
- Introduction to Community Ecology2m
- Introduction to Community Interactions9m
- Community Interactions: Competition (-/-)38m
- Community Interactions: Exploitation (+/-)23m
- Community Interactions: Mutualism (+/+) & Commensalism (+/0)9m
- Community Structure35m
- Community Dynamics26m
- Geographic Impact on Communities21m
- 52. Ecosystems2h 36m
- 53. Conservation Biology24m
5. Cell Components
Microscopes
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