Machinery of Life is a fantastic introduction to an intuition for what proteins and the mechanics of their scale.

https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Life-David-S-Goodsell/dp/03...

Related to this type of animation, there is a great book called "The Machinery of Life" that talks abut molecular level biology with amazing illustrations. https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Life-David-S-Goodsell/dp/03...

Synthetic biology seems like a pretty exciting area of study to me. Maybe get a copy of "The Machinery of Life", or "Regenesis".

http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Life-David-S-Goodsell/dp/038...

http://www.amazon.com/Regenesis-Synthetic-Biology-Reinvent-O...

The Machinery of Life [1] is a fantastic book, I was one of those curious laymen and boy did it saturate my thirst for learning about microbiology. I think it's close to the time I read it again.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Life-David-Goodsell/dp/0...

Edit: Whoops, no Markdown support. Revised link to use footnote.