dance #326, molecular machines

Wednesday November 11, 2009

Molecular Machines

9:50 p.m. Watching an online clip from the documentary Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist. I watch Lawrence Shapiro describe the goals of his research into protein structure. As he talks he holds his hand out to the side and looks at it, rather than at the camera. His hand holds the space of a protein molecule. His hand becomes a model. As he talks, his hand pulses intermittently to punctuate his points, and then again regains form as a protein model. He talks about proteins as the molecular machines of the cell. He wants to show how a drug molecule, like HIV protease inhibitor, can “throw a monkey wrench” into the mechanisms of cellular function. As he talks, his other hand slides into the frame of the camera, and gets slotted into the crevice of his palm—-or rather, the active site of the protein molecule. Ways of speaking converge with ways of seeing. Modeling is a practice of articulation. Alice howls into the night. The day was just glowing. Cold wind against skin as I ran this morning.

~ by nmyers on November 11, 2009.