The Flagellar Motor:

A giant molecular machine made up of hundreds of components that spontaneously come together to power bacterial movement.

Each component is represented by a different color in the structure, which is modeled after the molecule’s electron density solved by Electron Microscopy.

This ‘molecular machine’, which is as large as some viruses, serves as a model for the evolution of molecules and sits close to the threshhold of ‘life’. At what point does a group of molecules become so complex that it comes alive?

Can a molecule be irreducibly complex such that nothing came before it?