As I mentioned in the last post, I am excited to have won this cover art competition for Nature Chemical Biology's 10th anniversary issue, which just came out today:

The piñata is sort of celebratory - because what 10 year old journal doesn't want a piñata at their birthday party? I assume they also had a bouncy house and large inflatable slide. An early sketch I did had the stick as the "1", but that just ended up looking like a "0" getting beat up, which didn't really make any sense.

Another drawing I did for the competition was a little more bizarro.. The call for submissions asked for something having to do with the future of chemical biology, and I thought that many if not most chemical biologists have their eye on the ultimate prize of finding new therapeutic interventions for human diseases. Hence the medicine cabinet full of molecules.

And one other design I made was based on the fact that it seems like neurobiology is going to play a large role in the at least near future of chemical biology since that seems to be where a lot of money and effort is going right now. So this is the structure of the acetylcholine receptor from the side view and from the top view, with some neurons hanging out in the background.

My prize for winning the competition was not just getting my artwork on the cover, but also a year's subscription to Nature Chemical Biology. So look for a lot of The Short Answer installments coming from there in the next year.