As well as contributing to our physical features, these changes can mean that certain individuals, or populations are more or less susceptible to a disease.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) aim to identify these differences, and usually present this complex data in a scatterplot known as a Manhattan plot.
In this beautiful illustration of the Manhattan skyline :
Each window represents an SNP
The position along the x axis represents the genomic location
Each building represents a chromosome
The y axis shows the likelihood of a SNP being associated with the trait in question (the higher dot, the higher the probability)
Thank you to Gurmannat “Mannat” Kalra, molecular medicine PhD student at University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). Biology is her passion. Gurmannat creates interpretive paintings to make biological concepts easier to understand and remember.
Corals are made of colonies of polyps and have three ways to increase their numbers:
Asexual reproduction, where “parental” polyps bud to boost numbers within a colony
Fragmentation, when a section of coral falls away to establish a new colony
Sexual reproduction by spawning or by brooding
Sexual reproduction by brooding (as illustrated) can be important for the coral to increase genetic variation, but another major advantage is that it forms new colonies far away from the parental one.
The corals coordinate this process by the phases of the moon with sperm released (1) during the new moon and the larvae released (4) at the full moon, after a period of brooding in the polyps (2-4).
The larvae are then dispersed on the ocean currents until they find a home to begin developing a new colony.
Thank you to Lucia Garces, fellow demonstrator and scientific illustrator at St. George’s University. She’s also a graphic designer and nature lover.
Lucia made this image for Stephen Nimrod, assistant professor in the Department of Biology, Ecology & Conservation.
Finding and developing environmentally friendly battery materials is a growing venture. The image illustrates an experiment that combined forest-based nanocellulose, the organic red dye molecule alizarin, and conductive polymers to successfully fashion a battery with an impressive ability to hold an electric charge (>400 F g-1) and good stability (>1000 cycles). The alizarin, originally derived from plant roots and used historically to dye textiles, improves energy storage, while nanocellulose provides a nonporous and mechanically strong network for the polymers.
Thank you to Robert Brooke, PhD, co-founder of
Conceptualized.tech, who created the illustration, which was used for the cover of the Advanced Sustainable Systems Journal, vol 8, issue 8, 2019. Robert describes himself as a “scientist by day, 3D modeler/graphic designer by night.”
#sustainability#imagenscienceadventcalendar#batteries#entrepeneurship
The illustration shows the conformational changes of the highly dynamic spike protein of the virus:
“Prefusion conformation”: the spike protein binds to the cellular receptor ACE2 and attaches to the cell membrane.
“Prehairpin and transient conformation”: cellular proteases cleave the spike protein inducing dramatical conformational changes on its structure.
“Postfusion state”: fusion with the cellular membrane and release of the viral genome.
Thank you to Gloria Fuentes, who left her postdoc to try out scientific illustration and has now founded her own company,
The Visual Thinker.
You can read more about Gloria here.
“I sketched with Col-erase Tuscan Red and Brown on toned, tan paper,” Bea says. “Then I added a mix of watercolor and gouache.” Once at home, Bea consulted the New Beachcomber’s guide to the Pacific Northwest, by J. Duane Sept, to identify purple stars, crabs, chitons and more.
The result is a page from Bea’s naturalist notebook, shown here.
Thank you to Beatriz Martin, a character animator, certified medical illustrator (CMI), nature sketcher, and Fulbright Scholar with a medical background living in the U.S.
With curiosity and enthusiasm, her goal is to craft entertaining, inspiring and educational stories, merging art with science in both digital and traditional media.
But it might surprise you to know that an ancient retrovirus was, in part, responsible for this breakthrough.
The syncytiotrophoblast (depicted in the second panel):
⚆ A acts as a barrier between the placenta and the maternal tissue.
⚆ Contains a protein called syncytin that allows this barrier to form, and which originated from the envelope protein of a retrovirus!
⚆ is essential to maintain a close relationship where nutrients and gases can be exchanged, whilst ensuring feto-maternal tolerance and immune suppression.
⚆is a multinucleate cell layer of fetal origin.
Thank you to Antonio García Gómez. Antonio, holds a PhD in Biochemistry and he is a scientific illustrator passionate about translating scientific messages into effective and engaging illustrations.
The poison is acquired during the larval stage of the lifecycle.
As in the famous book “The Hungry Caterpillar,” this is the main feeding stage.
Although the larvae have a generalist diet, they acquire poison from eating plants containing toxins known as Pyrrolizidine alkaloids.
The larvae convert these plant-derived toxins into insect-specific toxins such as callimorphine.
As illustrated, the lifecycle of the Garden Tiger Moth:
Eggs hatch in late summer, as the previous generation of adults dies.
The insects survive winter as small larvae; in spring they begin eating and grow into a large caterpillars known as “Woolly Bears” due to the hairs on their back.
By June the caterpillars explore low vegetation and spin a cocoon there from their hairs and silk.
In summer, with the metamorphosis complete, the adult moth emerges.
Thank you to Brian Dall Schyth, a high school teacher and freelance Illustrator; owner of ExplainWays. This illustration was made for the Museum of Natural History in Aarhus as part of the 99 species project.
Key features of photosynthesis are:
The thylakoid membrane, in the chloroplast organelle, the location of the photosystems that absorb light
Light energy that transfers the electrons extracted from H2O to CO2, to produce carbohydrates
The carbon fixation cycle, where the ATP, NADPH and carbon dioxide are converted to sugars and starch
The illustration allows us to peer into the thylakoid membrane.
Thank you to Dmitry Shevela, a researcher at Umeå University and, a science illustrator at his own graphic design company ShevelaDesign AB.
The poster was developed in collaboration with Prof. Govindjee Govindjee, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Brown skin can have vibrant colors, like orange, red, purple, blue, green, and a variety of undertones,” says Hillary Wilson. But without this knowledge, illustrators risk creating darker-skinned individuals who are dull, flat, and lifeless.
In skin tone ball studies, which she calls “roadmaps for how the skin would look on a theoretical face,” Hillary experiments with colors, light and shadow, and practices making scars, wounds, and freckles on darker-skinned individuals.
Melanin, a pigment that contributes to the colour of our skin, is produced and packaged by membrane-bound structures called melanosomes that are:
made by the melanocytes cells & transferred and positioned above the nucleus of keratinocytes cells to protect their #DNA against UV damage
5 times more dense and larger in highly pigmented skin
isolated and dispersed through all the layers in darker skin, compared with only being in the basal layer in lighter skin tones
Thank you to Hillary Wilson, in her work she focuses on visual storytelling, and celebrating the rich variation in everyday people
Diatoms come in many different shapes and patterns thanks to their cell walls made of silica
#Diatoms are indicators of water quality, from pH to nutrient levels
Thank you to Anncharlott Berglar holds a PhD in Biology and an MA in scientific illustration. She loves to visualise #nature and #science and make them understandable to everyone. Anncharlott made most of the drawings based on the information presented on algaebase.org and diatoms.org, and was inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s diatom plates.
#sciart#seaweed#imagenscienceadventcalendar#waterquality