Pretty cool visualization.<p>HIV integrase is used a lot in many gene therapies. It is very good at 'inserting a genetic payload' into a human's genome. So we often co-opt it to insert desirable sequences (see sickle-cell disease discussion [1]). Everyone's favorite Cas9 is able to cut DNA at particular sequences, but is not of much help actually getting a payload to load inline at the location that it homes in on. The HIV integrase is about the opposite, it's great at getting a payload to load inline, but it inserts relatively randomly (which is dangerous - an insertion at random spots could put code in the middle of an important oncogene). Ideally we'd have a kind of hybrid integrase/Cas9 that is able to <i>both</i> target, and insert a payload dna inline into the genome - at a specific site only.<p>The therapies described in the video are all small molecules. Some of the more interesting, newer therapies however are instead protein mimics that actually play a higher-level role in 'deceiving' rather that just trying to 'jam' the virus (see the eCD4-IG synthetic protein [2]).<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781549" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781549</a><p>[2] <a href="https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/ecd4ig/" rel="nofollow">https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/ecd4ig/</a>
This is a really amazing visualization. One of the things that I like about it is that the visualization shows representative random, nonproductive interactions (the other molecules that bounce off of the enzymes, for example) and the enzymes don't typically "magically go straight to" where they're supposed to do, they're often doing a little bit of fumbling around first.<p>This is in contrast to a videos like this one, where the molecules move with a purpose:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbbbcAeCa4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbbbcAeCa4</a><p>or this one, where you watch protein helixes magically self-assemble by zooming into exactly where they needed to be - a process so statistically unlikely it boggles the mind,<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_zD3NxSsD8&list=PLj1EIndZcOLKapv29qpv5J-WMYkPDEb1Y&t=2m42s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_zD3NxSsD8&list=PLj1EIndZcO...</a>
Lovely. A similar style of animation to that of Drew Berry (also the sound-design is similar). I wonder if the rotations of the atomic chains are accurate: Drew Berry's visualizations show some of the translational thermal noise, but little rotational noise.<p>What's hard in these animations is to depict the mechanisms without using the motion-graphics equivalent of intentional stance ("x evolved <i>for</i> y"). Molecules don't have intentions, only electric fields (which are never shown) by which they move. That's not including quantum effects...anyway many molecular animations give the false impression that the molecules have agency.