Medical and Scientific Illustrations & Video Animations
John Liebler’s gallery of 3D medical illustrations of scientific molecular processes, neurotransmitters, viruses, DNA strands, signalling proteins, antibodies, cells, and mitochondria.
Many of these illustrations may be licensed as stock. See licensing page.
These yellow structures are adenosine A2A receptors in the shell of the nucleus accumbens of the brain. As we become tired, our bodies produce adenosine (the green small molecule above), which binds to these receptors and they, in turn, send signals to inhibit arousal. In other words, we get sleepy. Enter caffeine! (the orange small molecule above). Caffeine binds to the A2A receptors in place of adenosine and blocks the process, so we wake up.
My friend Justin Paglino is an Associate Research Scientist in Neurosurgery at Yale. I was talking to him after band practice the other day (he’s also a ridiculously talented singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist), and it turns out he’s an expert on the parvovirus. So, to try and get my head around what he does, I looked up his little friend, and made a render of it. Or at least its capsid. Viruses are just so darn cool, because they really look like little geometric space capsules, which, in fact, they kind of are. Only instead of astronauts or monkeys, they carry the virus’s DNA into the host cell’s nucleus where they pull off a bit of bio-espionage and convert the replication machinery inside to their own nefarious purposes. How cool is that? I mean unless you’re the host, in which case, it’s a little rude.
Pariacoto Virus (PaV) is a nodavirus with a dodecahedral cage of RNA inside an icosahedral capsid. PaV infects insects. This one came from a Peruvian armyworm. Really. A viral structure like this just compels me to model and render it.
A Transfer RNA is an adaptor molecule composed of RNA, typically 73 to 94 nucleotides in length, that serves as the physical link between the nucleotide sequence of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and the amino acid sequence of proteins.
These DNA structures come from pdb 1AOI. In this pdb the DNA is coiled around a histone, as it would be when it is all packed into the nucleosome, but I’ve omitted the histone in this render.
This star-shaped protein complex is called an apoptosome, and it is constructed in cells to bring about cell death. It’s actually part of a cell’s self-destruct system. When a cell becomes stressed or old, and ceases to function properly, a series of signals bring about apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This is a good thing, and part of the natural life cycle of a cell. Unfortunately, this process can be blocked in cancer cells, preventing your immune system from killing them off.
VEGF – A signalling protein that stimulates the growth of new blood vessels when we grow or heal.
Hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout our bodies. This model is based on pdb 1GZX.
In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a way of dividing space into a number of regions. A set of points (called seeds, sites, or generators) is specified beforehand and for each seed there will be a corresponding region consisting of all points closer to that seed than to any other. The regions are called Voronoi cells. It is named after Georgy Voronoy, and is also called a Voronoi tessellation, a Voronoi decomposition, a Voronoi partition, or a Dirichlet tessellation (after Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet). Voronoi diagrams can be found in a large number of fields in science and technology, even in art, and they have found numerous practical and theoretical applications.
Antibodies are the agents of our immune system. Each is sent to engage a specific target, to neutralize it or tag it for destruction. I’ve been doing some experimental renders with these, trying out different looks with the same geometry and composition. At the top of the page, is my favorite of the moment. It kind of reminds me of the fabulous movie posters created by Drew Struzan for Star Wars. (Sunday is Star Wars Day: May the Fourth Be With You! Get it?.. HA!…) Maybe these are the kind of antibodies that bind to midichlorians and eliminate them from the storyline.
DNA Day is a holiday celebrated on April 25. It commemorates the day in 1953 when James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin and colleagues published papers in the journal Nature on the structure of DNA. Furthermore, on that day in 2003 it was declared that the Human Genome Project was very close to complete. “The remaining tiny gaps are considered too costly to fill.” They probably just filled it in with frog DNA. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway, here’s a render of some DNA that I made just for the occasion. The structures come from pdb 1AOI. In this pdb the DNA is coiled around a histone, as it would be when it is all packed into the nucleosome, but I’ve omitted the histone in this render. It’s not Histone Day after all.
My friend Justin Paglino is an Associate Research Scientist in Neurosurgery at Yale. I was talking to him after band practice the other day (he’s also a ridiculously talented singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist), and it turns out he’s an expert on the parvovirus. So, to try and get my head around what he does, I looked up his little friend, and made a render of it. Or at least its capsid. Viruses are just so darn cool, because they really look like little geometric space capsules, which, in fact, they kind of are. Only instead of astronauts or monkeys, they carry the virus’s DNA into the host cell’s nucleus where they pull off a bit of bio-espionage and convert the replication machinery inside to their own nefarious purposes. How cool is that? I mean unless you’re the host, in which case, it’s a little rude.
Golgi Apparatus. Copyright © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
ATP Synthase Complex. Copyright © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Mitochondria. Copyright © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Kinesin-Motor-Protein. Copyright © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
All images © John Liebler – Art of the Cell, except where noted. All rights reserved.
“The Inner Life of the Cell” Video Animation
Created over a two-year period by a pair of Harvard scientists and a single 3D animator, “The Inner Life of the Cell” established a dramatic, cinematic look for educational scientific visualizations.
Combining cinematic visuals with a compelling emotional soundtrack, inviting viewers to engage with material that might otherwise be inaccessible.
In 2006, the three-minute edit was featured in SIGGRAPH’s Electronic Theater. In 2007, it was named one of the most important medical animations of 2007 by New Scientist. It was also named the second most important medical animation of 2007 by Wired Science Magazine, and in 2010, Erik Olsen of the New York Times, Science Times, said it was “Perhaps the pivotal moment for molecular animations…”
For more about “The Inner Life of the Cell” see my blog entry, here:
The Inner Life of the Cell was Supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
John Liebler’s 3D Medical Animation Demo Reel
Beneath our everyday world there is a miniature universe of cells, trillions of tiny worlds, unseen and beautiful. Here is the latest Art of the Cell demo reel, including clips from many of the projects I have worked on, such as “Biology: How Life Works”, and “The Inner Life of the Cell”.
In this video compilation, you will glimpse transport molecules strutting through the cellular landscape, watch antibodies mark cancer cells for destruction, view viral rna enclosed in geometric capsids, and witness apoptosomes gathering in a cell’s final hour. Look on as spinning atp synthases generate power deep in the folds of mitochondria, observe chromosomes divide as a cell undergoes mitosis, and see signals amplified as they cascade through the cytosol.
I hope that you enjoy this two and a half minute tour of the Art of the Cell. ~ John