The Demon Job

The case

Nick Angstrom is a water molecule and a private eye. Every job in town leaves a little heat in the water, and Nick feels it and follows it back. One rainy Monday night, Helen, the first molecule there ever was, calls him at Rudy's. A man they call the Fat Man wants to sell her the Demon, a doorkeeper who sorts fast molecules from slow ones and, the Fat Man says, could run the city on the heat of the sea for nothing. She wants Nick to find out what he runs on.

Every character is a real molecule, drawn from its real coordinates, and what each one does in the film is what it really does. Only the talking is invented.

The cast, in order of appearance

1. 
   The Old Man

   KaiC, a clock protein; with KaiA, KaiB and ATP it keeps a day in a test tube (PDB 1TF7, 5N8Y)

   first seen at 0:00 · case file No. 138
2. 
   Nick Angstrom

   Water, a private eye: one oxygen, two hydrogens

   first seen at 1:07
3. 
   Helen

   The helium hydride ion, HeH+, the first molecule there ever was

   first seen at 2:31 · case file No. 113
4. 
   Presto

   Prestin, a pair in the wall of a hair cell (PDB 7S8X, 7S9B)

   first seen at 5:38 · case file No. 120
5. 
   The Fat Man

   A Pd12L24 sphere that puts itself together from 36 pieces (COD 4120364)

   first seen at 7:12 · case file No. 131
6. 
   The Demon

   A molecular information ratchet, made in Edinburgh (COD 4107428)

   first seen at 8:51 · case file No. 122
7. 
   The Doorman

   MscS, a mechanosensitive channel from E. coli (PDB 2OAU, 2VV5)

   first seen at 10:50 · case file No. 116
8. 
   The Professor

   Thorium monoxide, ThO, in a cold molecular beam

   first seen at 14:09 · case file No. 123
9. 
   A cousin

   Water, held in a molecular sieve (zeolite A)

   first seen at 15:49
10. 
    The Muscle

    The phi29 DNA packaging motor (PDB 1FOU)

    first seen at 16:56 · case file No. 136
11. 
    The Float

    A gas vesicle: a hollow protein shell full of air (built on PDB 7R1C)

    first seen at 18:02 · case file No. 126
12. 
    The Knot

    Benenodin-1, a lasso peptide (PDB 5TJ1, 6B5W)

    first seen at 20:18 · case file No. 132

Chapters

1. 0:00 The warm box
2. 1:07 Rudy's
3. 2:31 Helen calls
4. 5:38 Presto
5. 7:12 The Fat Man
6. 8:51 The Demon
7. 10:50 The Doorman
8. 12:40 Helen calls again
9. 14:09 The Professor
10. 15:49 The sieves
11. 16:56 The Muscle
12. 18:02 The Old Man and the Float
13. 20:18 The Knot
14. 22:47 The bill
15. 24:33 Ten past two
16. 26:02 Friday morning
17. 26:48 Saturday
18. 27:55 Last call
19. 29:29 Downhill
20. 30:04 Cast

How it was made

Every molecule is drawn from its real structure (Protein Data Bank and crystallography entries, and published models) with our own noir renderer. Molecules that share a shot are to scale, and when one changes shape it moves between its real, measured states.

The script is fiction built on sourced science: each of the ten molecules' case files carries the notes and papers behind what it does on screen.

The voices are synthetic (Chatterbox, cast from stock voices); the music and sound were generated for the film.