Fresno Nightcrawlers Variant 3: Enzymes of the Leviathan

I’m fascinated by the concept of beings existing in higher dimensions beyond the four that we know. Beings that we see only fleetingly as they move through our plane of existence. In order to get a better handle on this idea, imagine a two-dimensional being living on a flat surface that has length and width but no depth. A three-dimensional creature passing into this 2-D universe would only be visible as the part of them that is immediately passing through the plane. Thus, they would appear as “slices” of the whole. As a shifting 2-D blob, seeming to expand and contract and twist. If you’ve ever read the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about.
Now, imagine that one of these higher-dimensional beings is so immense that even the parts that do pass into our dimension- parts which seem large to us- are actually just the tiniest cell components to this leviathan.

This is what I’ve imagined for this version of the Fresno Nightcrawlers. Here, the “walking wishbones” are actually gigantic versions of microscopic proteins known as kinesins. Within every cell is a network of strands called microtubules which act as a sort of “railway” for the transport of important molecules and cellular building blocks. Kinesins are proteins that transport these molecular cargos along the microtubules via a long chain attached to them. To move, kinesins use a “hand-over-hand” (or, more accurately, “protein head over protein head”) motion which looks remarkably like walking.

Here’s an awesome animation of kinesin at work:

In this scenario, the Nightcrawlers are the only visible part of the cellular structure with the cargo, attachment chain and microtubule pathway the “creature” is moving on existing in a dimension we can’t see. 

Why, though, is this one component visible in our dimension? Perhaps there is something about the physical structure of our universe that makes them more stable or efficient, much like how many enzymes work best in a warmer environment.

Or perhaps the appearance of these beings in our dimension was only a fleeting accident that just happened to be caught on film.

Extrapolating from the idea of the Nightcrawlers as giant kinesin proteins, I also created a few more giant molecules from this unfathomably huge beast that might accidentally drift into our plane of existence for a few moments.

Ribosomes are bundles of RNA and proteins that read the cell’s DNA to build new proteins.

Molecular Chaperones are containers that guide freshly-formed protein chains into the proper shapes to create functional enzymes.

ATP Synthase is a large molecule embedded in the cell membrane that is used to generate ATP (adenosine triphosphate) an essential molecule that is used as an energy source in the cell.

Proteosomes and Ubiquitin are enzymes designed to break down other enzymes and proteins that are no longer needed.  Ubiquitin attaches a tag to proteins, and proteosome attacks these marked molecules, breaking them down into its constituent amino acids.

There would, of course, be billions of molecules in this higher-dimensional titan that would have no equivalent to Earthly structures. Thus the inclusion of an “Unkown Organelle”

On a final note, here’s another fun little animation explaining the role of kinesin in the body:

REFERENCE

Our Molecular Nature: The Body's Motors, Machines and Messages by David S. Goodsell