Embryonic stem cell division animation

This awesome animation  shows the characteristics, growth and function of stem cells; starting from embryonic stage.

Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life

Can we create new life out of our digital universe?” asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into “fourth-generation fuels” — biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the reasons why we would want to do this, and the bioethics of synthetic life. A fascinating Q&A with TED’s Chris Anderson follows .  

Molecular Biology Visualization of DNA (Animation)

This is a very informative animation of how DNA is packaged and replicated within the cell nucleus.   

Beautiful story inside the body

Commissioned by Wall to Wall Television for Channel 4, the Discovery Channel and ITEL, Body Story is a series of programmes that takes the audience on six thrilling journeys inside the human body.

Amazing 3D simulations of science in silico

Computer simulations and visualizations are performing the thought experiments of the 21st century and pushing the limits of human vision and imagination. In silico simulations are probably future of many complex biological experiments.

Hat tip to  reasonable deviations blog.

Wonderful Medical Animation Reel

This 3D animation shows various surgical (mostly orthopedic) medical procedures performed to fix the problems in our bodies. Very nice done. 

3D Animation of the Human Body

This is a fascinating and  very cool 3D animation of various biological processes within our bodies. 

Super 3D animation that shows the mode of action of an HIV drug

In this cool animation the mode of action of a novel HIV drug, a protease inhibitor, is explained. Protease inhibitors revolutionized treatment of HIV infection by enabling drug combinations with inhibitors of another HIV enzyme the reverse transcription. Thus, this made it more difficult for virus to develop multiple mutations simultaneously to escape the effects of a single drug.

Amazing chemistry and rational drug design is involved in creating these new drugs.

Wonderful animation that explains how neurons work

This powerful animation clip shows how neurons work. The more we visualize these biological reactions the more we begin to understand the complexity of biological systems. Hopefully there will be more of these sort of biological animations in future and these will be incorporated into our education system.

3D Medical Animation of Normal Vaginal Childbirth

This fascinating 3D medical animation shows a time lapse view of labor and delivery during normal vaginal birth in a simplified form with only the mother’s skeletal structures and the baby in the uterus. Also shown in detail is dilatation (dilation or dilating) and effacement (thinning) of the cervix during childbirth contractions.

Credit: Nucleus Medical Art

3D Animation of HIV Replication

This is an outstanding 3D animation of HIV replication cycle. I especially loved the entry part, which is like watching a science fiction movie.

The animation is fairly accurate representation of what we know about the this viruses life cycle today, except the part on entry of viral DNA into nucleus. Based on our current knowledge, import of viral DNA into nucleus is not dependent on integrase but other viral and host proteins that are still elusive. Integrase is however necessary for the integration of virus DNA into host genome.

Fantastic animation that visualizes physiology of the body

This is a wonderful biomedical animation, which seems was created to explain physiology and disease processes to patients and to health professionals. Thanks to Al Fin for finding this animation.

I wonder if in future we can have the HealthTube equivalent of YouTube, where one can watch thousands of animations such as this to understand how biological systems work.

How DNA transcription works

This is a very nice animation describing the process of gene transcription in cells for beginners in molecular biology: