bacteria verses richmond

i had a few minutes this afternoon to stare out the window. six floors high in downtown richmond, at rush hour, watching the rainy day traffic. in the immediate vicinity is city hall, over 15 floors and old city hall, castle-like and tall. traffic is moving and suddenly it hits me. not an original thought, but a spin of the turtle on the back of a turtle on the back of a turtle view of the universe.

what if this world is actually like a bacterium to something much much bigger than us? and then, what would the different elements i can see from my window be if you compared the structure or function to a bacterium?

start high...the sky would be like the plasma membrane, fluid and protective. the tall buildings would be receptors or extracellular proteins. roads? cytoskeleton apparatus, small roads would be microfilaments, highways would be microtubules and interstates would be intermediate filaments. all of them are directional, and canvass the landscape. cars would be transportation vesicles moving things about, maybe they would be clatherin-coated maybe cavaolae. more along the lines of transportation...lysosomes are responsible for destruction and recycling of proteins in bacteria? definitely garbage trucks! city hall, easy: the nucleus. houses? storage vesicles.

and then it was back to work time.

happily, my experiment worked.