In honor of Bruce Beutler, one of the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, here is an illustration of Toll-Like Receptor (blue) signaling that I did years ago for a company whose scientific advisory board includes Dr. Beutler.
I wish I had an image related to quasicrystals in my back pocket for the winner in Chemistry, Daniel Shechtman, but since no one even really knows what they look like, that'll have to wait.
Today I spent some time on a draft of one of my cover art projects, which is going to be submitted with an article to the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry. What's happening is that this big honking molecule acts like a cage for zinc that can distract it from its usual biological endeavors. However, if the molecule is exposed to a certain wavelength of light, photolysis occurs, which means that a bond breaks and the molecule separates into fragments that are no longer strong enough to contain zinc. Being able to control zinc concentration in a time-dependent manner can hopefully answer some interesting questions about neurobiology!
It still needs some polishing but here's another draft animation (the slow version) for the project I mentioned in the last post. This one goes with a video about quantum dots, and describes how their super small stature gives them properties similar to atoms. Namely, they can absorb and emit light. Electrons get promoted to higher energy levels upon absorption of light, and the difference in energy levels corresponds to the energy, and thus the frequency, of light emitted. What is cool about quantum dots is that they absorb/emit different colors based on their size. So smaller dots glow blue, larger ones red, etc. Coincidentally, this week I taught my student about atomic line spectra, the same concept but just for atoms, not quantum dots. At least this week my brain didn't have to switch wavelenths.
Since I've been remiss in posting, I'll make this a double post. The still image and animation are both part of a project in which short video clips have been recorded of researchers talking about their work. My job is to add images and animations that illustrate what they are describing. The two items below both have to do with bugs that can gobble up carbon dioxide, a potentially useful trait in itself, and then proceed to convert the carbon source into something that can be used as fuel. The animation is creepily slow here because of the frame speed I had to use to convert it from Flash to Quicktime. Once embedded into the video, it will be quicker and less hypnotic.
Untitled from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.
This afternoon I spent a little time putting together an idea for an animation to describe balancing equations. It would ultimately be interactive, with the students hitting the "Add a mole" buttons themselves, but this is just meant to be a simple demo. I wish I could say that I am such a devoted adjunct assistant professor that I spend my Sundays making interactive Flash animations for my students (if you've been following for awhile then you've seen that I do make animations for them, but they're low-budget Keynote jobbies), but in actuality this is brainstorming for an all-digital general chemistry textbook that I am lucky to have been asked to contribute to. The challenge for this particular animation is that the students using this textbook will not have seen molecular structures before, so I can't use them to demonstrate the reaction stoichiometry as I usually do. Never have my two jobs been so overlapping, but I think that's why I was chosen for this book. More animations to come soon!
Some months ago I was hired by my undergraduate research advisor to create a figure for a paper she was preparing to submit, and here it is, now that the manuscript has been accepted. As an undergraduate I worked in her lab for over two years, where I fell in love with research and learned everything from how to run a dry reaction to the difference between a sipping tequila and the kind you make margaritas with. She is the reason I went to MIT, and her example greatly influenced my career goals. After everything she's done for me, I told her I couldn't take any money for the project, but she refused to give it to me unless I charged her what I would charge anyone else. Her vision for the figure was to keep it very simple, in a sort of Japanese minimalist style. I actually find this more challenging than the typical style I use. Every mark really counts, as well as the precise placement of every element. It is an important style to master when the main goal is communicating, as it almost always is, and it is something I am continuing to practice. Here, an inhibitor of reverse transcriptase, a target for HIV-1 therapy, has been synthesized as a dimer through a disulfide bridge. The dimerized version acts as an inhibitor of the transmembrane P-glycoprotein, which captures small organic molecules non-specifically and transports them out of the cell, foiling attempts to deliver drugs to cells. While holding up the P-glycoprotein, other dimers get into the cell, where the reducing environment breaks the disulfide bond and intracellular esterases chew off the linker. Monomers of the drug are then free to inhibit the reverse transcriptase. It is an elegant system that deserved an elegant visual representation. I am no Piet Mondrian, but then in art I've always favored abstract expressionism, which is exactly what the minimalist movement rebeled against. So therein lies the challenge. But what's a good career without any challenges?
Two weeks ago I was drawing zebras and cross-dressing horses. Last week I was reading up on Boolean logic. Now I'm making figures to describe the statistical analysis of mass spectrometry-based proteomics experiments. Here's one of them, which mainly describes how subjects are chosen from healthy and diseased populations. This is the second of four figures, and they just keep getting more and more complicated. This project definitely put my design skills to the test. It's not done, but it is close. And next week? Next up is a graphical abstract that invokes the mythological story of Cupid shooting an arrow into Apollo's heart, causing him to fall hard for Daphne. The client had this idea as a metaphor for his system. It's my job to find a way to represent a huge honking natural product as an arrow. Should be a fun one.
Not only has this been a fun project for me, complete departure as it is from my usual subjects, the TA trainng illustrations hold some good lessons for me in my own teaching. With only a year under my belt, I am still learning how best to encourage and motivate students. Turns out it's not only the students who don't care or don't try who get C's, and when they come looking for help, it's really important not to scare them away. Sometimes it feels like the most challenging part of the job takes place outside of the classroom. I may never get used to the tears, but hopefully I will grow to respond without an awkwardness akin to watching a commercial for feminine hygiene products with one's father.
This is a different take on the same idea described in the July 18 post. Instead of an owl feeling like a turkey, it's a horse trying to pass itself off as a zebra. It's a subtle difference, but the point is still the same - that almost everyone feels like an imposter at some point. It's best not to feed into these fears in other people, or yourself.
This series of six illustrations is almost finished, and then I'll be back to the nano-scale again. It's been a really fun departure from the usual material, but I'm excited about some new projects on the horizon as well. More on those soon.
This cartoon was done for the HHMI-funded training program I talked about on July 13 and 18. The scenario depicted was inspired by actual events described to the PI on the grant by a female student. She felt that she got zero feedback from her advisor, as opposed to her male colleagues, which led her to think that he didn't even care enough about her or her project to be angry at her. More likely, he wanted data from the male student for a particular reason, but when no feedback is given, imaginations are given free reign to fill in the gaps. The training is about giving feedback, but giving it wisely, and not just to certain students. As a side note, it has obviously been awhile since I ran a column. Now that I think about it, I doubt she would have collected that many fractions in only 15 minutes without pushing air through the column. As fueled as she is by disappointment and resentment, these forces cannot contend with gravity. I may need to edit this a bit.
In an effort to ward off cabin fever, I've taken my work out of the house a couple of times this week. The work I've been doing over the past few days isn't really worth showing yet, so instead I'll show you what I did during my breaks. Because one of my current projects involves illustrating humans, it's a good time to get some fresh practice drawing people. From my perch next to the window inside a cafe, I had a great view of people sitting outside. The hardest part of doing sketches like these is the hands. Not only are hands notoriously hard to draw, they are the parts that we seem to most often move, even when we're sitting still. So cut me a little slack on the weird looking hands, they are partially drawn from memory. And lest there be any misinterpretation, that is a pen in the man's hand. The young lady is texting, I believe.
Like the post on July 2nd, this figure is for a systems biology textbook that a client is writing and I am glad to be involved in. For this one, he sketched out roughly what he wanted to go into it and I turned it into this. At this point we'll probably make some decisions about the style of the illustrations that will go into the book, since we'll want to keep them consistent. For instance, I've been using my two-toned shaded but sort of 2D representations of proteins. I have a few different ways of representing proteins, but when I can't use real X-ray crystal structures, this is probably my favorite. I'd like to say that my style was influenced by Picasso or Cassandre. The truth is, it is inspired by watching the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force on TV (particularly the character Meatwad). I was looking to strike the balance between simplicity and aesthetics, and this is what happened. We'll see if it sticks.
This sketch, illustrating imposter syndrome, is in the same series as the sketch from the previous post. This training session is given broadly, but is in large part designed for teaching assistants at MIT. When I was a TA at MIT for freshman chemistry, I was surprised to find that my students were not robot geniuses speaking in a secret language of differential equations, but rather they were for the most part 18 and 19 year olds terrified of not living up to expectations. I could relate, because as a 1st year grad student, I was still a little nervous about whether or not I belonged there too. An extreme form of this is called imposter syndrome, in which one believes that he or she doesn't belong, and lives in fear of being "found out". Hence the wise but self-doubting owl in the illustration, seeing itself in the reflection as a decidedly less clever species of bird. This is why educators should be careful to use "wise criticism" when talking to struggling students, as opposed to saying things like, "So... your family must have a strong alumni connection to this school?"
Today I've been diving into one of my new projects, which is to create illustrations to accompany training materials for a course that is given to teaching assistants and professors in the sciences on stereotype threat, a term I hadn't heard of until recently. The idea is that students may underperform if they feel that instructors, advisors, or fellow students/labmates are stereotyping them, whether they are or they aren't. For example, I might worry that a potential client isn't taking me seriously because I am a woman, because I am small (which makes me seem younger than I am), or because my last name suggests that I might have just come from the pub. As the sketch above depicts, some fMRI studies suggest that there is actually an increase in blood flow from the portion of the brain responsible for logic and reasoning to the region associated with emotional response when subjects are under stereotype threat. From there it's pretty obvious to see why it might be harder to learn chemistry or make progress on their thesis projects. More on this soon.
Before:
After:
Frankly, those boxy boxes were doing nothing for fnr's figure, and DNA is so obviously an autumn, not a spring. (Hello? Has it never had its colors done?) Finally, notice how highlighting the mechanism really brought out its function. And how does the subject feel about its new look? "Like a million copies." <cue groans>
Here is just a sliver of a project I've been working on. Just like us humans, this simplest of all unicellular organisms, Mycoplasms genitalium, converts glucose into energy and metabolites that feed into all of its cellular processes. This bug has clearly never heard of the Atkin's diet, but might laugh at us for snubbing such a useful source of fuel, if it had a mouth and a sense of humor.
It's almost moving day, and I need to let go of some old paintings. I'm finally ready to admit to myself that I'm never going to do anything with them, and they don't need to sit in a box at the back of another closet for another 5 years. So here is where I'll say farewell to them, and if anyone wants them, they are up for grabs. Otherwise they'll be tossed by the weekend. For the first two, which are self portraits, I had big plans of selling them to restaurants or bars to be used on their ladies' room doors. The problem is that I never got around to pairing them with counterparts for men's rooms. I tried to get my male friends to take photos along this same theme in men's rooms. and a couple of brave ones did, but the photos didn't really turn out. So, I'm throwing in the towel on this ill-conceived project.
Finally, I have no idea where the inspiration from this painting came from. I don't even do abstract art. It just sort of happened shortly after I moved to San Diego.
All of these are 18x24-in (estimated - the tape measure is packed) oil paintings on treated foam board, so shipping wouldn't put you out much if you'd like to make one of them yours!
Believe it or not, these found a home before making it to the dumpster!
As a follow-up to the April 17th and May 5th posts, here is the nearly finished product. I'm still waiting for the final comments, but they seem pleased so the final product will look something like this. I'm working on touch-ups still while I wait. I have to remember that it's going to be a 36x24-in poster, so any little stray marks or mistakes will be glaringly obvious. The clients wanted this poster to be very simple, which makes it harder for these little gremlins to hide. This must be how actors felt once HD television came along and everyone got 60-inch TV sets. (Admittedly, the audience of this poster may be a smidge smaller.)
Just came back from a great long weekend in New York (Long Island and the city), and sadly, as usual, forgot to take photos. But I did discover a new place for sketching people. Aside from the jerkiness of the ride, and thus the sketch, the subway is great for catching people engrossed in a book, their own thoughts, or a sketchbook of their own (from left to right, respectively). The last panel is a minor highlight of the trip. While in The Strand bookstore, I came across this signed copy of the first novel by one of my favorite writers. I read it about 10 years ago, and lost my copy of it in a move about 6 years ago. Shteyngart lives in NYC and had signed some of his books for The Strand, a stroke of luck for me which at first seemed second only to stumbling on an actual book signing. On further consideration, I realized that this was actually better, since I'm not now obsessing about some stupid thing I would have certainly said to him.
Now that I'm back to work, I'm excited about a couple of new projects: illustrating a training booklet for general chemistry teaching assistants at MIT, and illustrating a systems biology textbook. More on those soon!
After the longest hiatus this sketch blog has ever taken, here is a painting of a raven I did after watching a Nature channel program about how ridiculously smart these crafty birds are. A bit off topic, but I hope you enjoy!