Short plant biology videos worth watching...

A collection of interesting or useful plant biology videos on YouTube (and maybe elsewhere) with brief commentary, assembled by the team at www.ChloroFilms.org - Plant Biology Videos on YouTube. If you know of any plant biology videos that should be featured in this blog, please add them in a comment. Thanks!

Arabidopsis Flower in 3D

Impressive 3D reconstruction of the flower stalk and single flower of Arabidopsis, using serial sectioning and After Effects. Wow! It's time to learn After Effects...

Kenaf Callus Hoedown

A stop motion video of the techniques for plant tissue culture. Quirky and cool! A grand prize winner in the ChloroFilms contest.

Pollination Methods: Solanum

How to make your own crosses of potato and tomato, explained in detail. A ChloroFilms winner.

"Sweet Home Apparatus" - the ultimate Golgi music video

"Hey there, little lady, how're ya' feelin' tonight?" So begins a sweet and romantic and whimsical song about the Golgi apparatus. Yes, the Golgi apparatus! A winner in Chlorofilms contest #1.

laBloomba - dancing flowers to the music of La Bomba

You will be rocking to time-lapse footage of flowers opening, dancing. Fun! A 1st prize winner at www.ChloroFilms.org (contest #1).

The Fastest Flights in Nature: A Fungal Opera

High speed videos of fungi blasting their spores into the air - a microscopic cannon! A 2nd prize winner in Chlorofilms contest #1.

Light capture by Photosystem I

Shows the workings of the microscopic solar collector used in Photosystem I, the first part of photosynthesis linked to water splitting. Nice animation of light energy bouncing around in the light harvesting complex, until it is captured by the reaction center.

Preparing Animal and Plant Cells Slides

A clear demo of preparing onion epidermal peel for microscopic examination. I wonder if this would work for many other plant tissues?

VIB Animation: Pioneering Research in Plant Biology

Slick animation of plant growth, cell division, meristems, lateral roots, auxin transport...gets a bit too technical in some of its references to molecular biology. An advert for VIB.

Development of Cellulosic Biofuels

Chris Somerville (Director of EBI, UC Berkeley) summarizes the rationale and technical aspects of moving towards second-generation cellulosic biofuels. One-hr lecture/powerpoint. Authoritative and informative.

PSI - Are my soybeans wearing different genes?

Three Purdue co-eds extract DNA to look for transgenes in their tofu. A 1st prize winner in the ChloroFilms contest #1.

fantastic vesicle traffic

A short, wonderfully whimsical, and funny video showing vesicle trafficking in plant cells. A slick combination of video microscopy (cellular machinery tagged with GFP, a fluorescent protein, clever animation and good acting. This would be a great video to show in cell biology lectures.

Fertile Eyes: Grand Prize winner in the 1st ChloroFilms contest

A fresh presentation of sex in plants, using the human body to such creative effect. Visually captivating. You will look at flowers in a new way after seeing this video. The puns are a extra treat. See additional winners of the ChloroFilms context at this link. Must see.

Photosynthetic peep show

Humorous interviews of MIT grads questioned on the origin of plant mass (wood), followed by a dance of marshmallow peeps simulating carbon dioxide capture and processing into sugars during photosynthesis (Calvin cylce). Won a 2nd prize at www.Chlorofilms.org