I’ve recently turned in a commissioned review article about the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell shape. I’m an old hand at reviews, but this was something special: a ‘Cell Science at a Glance’ poster for the Journal of Cell Science. In this nifty piece of front matter, the words are secondary: what authors are asked is to conceptualize their topic in the form of a large poster of visual art (four times the size of a journal page) which will be redrawn by a professional artist into a full-color piece, folded as an inset into the print issue and available as a PowerPoint slide online. And it must stand alone, with the accompanying 1,500 or so words of text serving as a mere bonus.
A room with a mess The edges of truth are seldom tidy
Now, I am a wordsmith primarily, and after so many years of practice, there are very few gigs that cause me undue trouble. I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, and the 1,500 words were duly researched, executed, polished and EndNoted in about seven days.
But the sketch was another story. I was raised by artists, so I’ve always done a bit of drawing; when I was an undergraduate on financial aid, I even helped bankroll my education by doing graphic design for the college. But how can you actually draw the role of actin in cell shape? And then, once you decide on your conceptual framework, what goes in and what goes out? Biology, after all, is a nightmare of reductionism, its various elements going on relentlessly in all directions; every protein is touched by dozens of others, and so on, ad infinitum. One has to somehow incorporate three dimensions, and a dynamic temporal aspect too. I also wanted to compare yeast to higher metazoans, so there was that facet to depict as well.
But there is an even more interesting problem here, as I was soon to find out. In words, you can deal fairly easily with controversial or unknown elements of a topic. You can present caveats and conflicting viewpoints, and attempt to synthesize some sort of consensus. But a drawing is absolute: something is either depicted, or it isn’t. And as I started to flesh out all the details of my drawing, I kept finding myself stumbling into grey areas. Were these particular filaments catalyzed by formins or Arps? Scouring the literature, I could see that one vociferous camp claimed the former, and another, the latter. No sooner had I dispatched one ambiguity that the next would arise: which signalling cascade was truly upstream of this particular protrusion? Looking into it, I found that the jury is still out, and entire review articles had been written about something that I was trying to reduce to a one-centimeter squiggle of graphite.
In the end, I just did my best. It turned out to be very soothing, sitting in a quiet room with a pile of colored pencils and a very large eraser – a far cry from normal lab life. And now, I am hoping that the chosen peer reviewers are not so embroiled in such a fervent battle over the genesis of bulge X or protrusion Y that they fail to appreciate what it takes to generalize in art.
When reviewing actin’s action
one can’t please every faction.
Are there no ends to your talents, Dr J?
Great idea though! I look forward to seeing the finished results.
Are there no ends
only pointed ones.
(Cytoskeleton in-joke)
I wonder if it will be difficult working with the artist, trying to come to consensus. Form before function?
That’s enough of your barbed commentary, Grant.
(ditto)
you don’t appreciate my waspish wit?
Oh, come on, let’s preserve the tensegrity of this comment thread!
COOL! I love drawing and making figures of things. Once it’s doen , can you show the intermediate stages?
Bora: don’t get too ruffled.
Eva, I do have some close-up sketches, but was a bit shy to show them!
Tolkien wrote to one of his sons to say that he’d spent his day tidying up his office. A messy office, he said, is a sign of a scholar at work, what he called ‘philological preocupation’. But Tolkien was also a dab hand with a paintbrush…
I can’t work in mess. Actually that big white table was rather organized, somewhere deep down — every pile of papers and sketches corresponding to a particular protrusion.
Goodness, there’s a woodpecker at our feeder. This storm has brought out a lovely array of birds.
Eva: and here I thought you meant GFAP and vimentin…
Oh dear.
Oooh – barbed and ruffled got taken before I got here. I’ll just go and slime mould off.
But I would love to see the finished version (which of course will sail through peer review) – will you post a link when it is out, Jenny?
Off to decorate, now. (Did anyone get that one yet?)
Ha ha ha. Next to your wit, Maxine, the rest of us are just treadmilling.
I tried and tried to come up with something witty to say here using ‘tight junctions’, but I’ve given up.
So: let me just observe that you have a very nice table.
most.useless.comment.ever
Er…not! (my wit) But you are very kind, Jenny. I lumber, am definitely not leading edge in comparsion with the Nature Network sparklers, if that isn’t to open the door to a “clique alert”.
Pshaw. Your filopodia extend before all of us.
Richard: Ikea, believe it or not. From the more exclusive, “what the heck, we’ll assemble it for you” collection. White enamel turns out not to be very practical, but I do love it.
Don’t stress, Maxine. We need a critical concentration of commenters. And to cap it off, is that a nucleus on Jenny’s table?
No, just some random organelles. And a cuppa.
Pinocytosis?
Bless you. And stop actin up.
“I do have some close-up sketches, but was a bit shy to show them!”
If this had been about microtubuli instead of actin, I’d have said that I would be dynein to see them. Dynamin just doesn’t quite work.
Vasp happening? Stop ‘arping on, do. You’re dedicated followers of fascin, just villin in for Jenny while she’s asleep. It’s scar-ing me. I might have to start severin some threads.
We’ve gone too far down this RhoD. As a matter of FAK I can’t think of a pun for gelsolin so I’ll say toodle-PIP 2 for now. Time for a night Capz.
You’re really Rac-ing up the puns there.
Good lord. How long did it take you to come up with that comment?
Ena-f!
I kinase taq any more.
I’m not talin you again, Henry.
pax pax pax?
I’m co-feelin’ fed up.
Kraken me up. Your all Dribble-ing. But someone is Ran-ing very fast. I need a myc to relay the scores … half-time break … Cullin, hand over the popcorn please …
Who let the bloody Drosophila geneticists in here?
I blame bride of sevenless
Now don’t TRAIL off. Try to keep cadherin to actin.
(…catenin?)
The son of sevenless threw a roc and the gates were open. Plus, the cdk checkpoints were snare-ing. Is someone shouting sos? Keep the ball Rho-lling. Ras, where’s my soda?
No, it’ just pleased to see you.
Myo sin.
Oh, my God.
Charging to 360…clear…
I Ced, stop it! I’m tired of jokes of this Ilk. It’s time I LEF this silly topic, before it makes me _CREB_by.
Apparently, someone let the C. elegans people in, too.
Bloody italics tags.
Poor Richard: all a bit much for you, dear?
Fly geneticists aren’t all fun and games. Try this:
I wish that someone would tell all these punners to CG13897!
See what I mean?
“CG13897”
Before anyone else bothers to look it up in Flybase: “Its molecular function is described as DNA binding. The biological processes in which it is involved are not known.”
Stupid flies.
I can assure that many uncharacterized human genes are equally annoying when it comes to their GO terms…
Now I’m utterly FOXP2ed
I can assure that many uncharacterized human genes are equally annoying when it comes to their GO terms…
Gak. I worked at one time on a “predicted gene of no homology to anything and no known function” known as Unigene Hs.70932.
That Unigene ID has now been retired, in favour of the much-sexier Hs.658288.
I’m also FOXed. Time to go for a nice order of Fushi Tarazu.
“Now I’m utterly FOXP2ed”
Oh, SNAP25
Now, now, keep your SOX on. I declare Eva the winner for her elegant use of the Rac.
Try working with any gene that starts with LOC, Riken, MGC, TMEM or ZFP (n’est-ce pas, RG?). Sometimes when you know a little structure-wise, it is almost more misleading than when there’s nothing at all.
Jenny, I admire you for looking at what happens in the cytoplasm. I dare not venture much out of the nucleus, myself; it’s a complex world out there.
TMEM? Isn’t that a cell culture medium?
That’s DMEM… TMEMs are generic transmembrane proteins about which one knows nothing else.
So what’s a ZNF?
“I declare Eva the winner for her elegant use of the Rac.”
Woohoo! I ROCK1!
LOC, Riken, MGC, TMEM or ZFP
Argh. Add CYP and HLA to this list. Then take the list and bury it a loooooooooooong way away from me, please.
I’m still giggling over “toodle-PIP2” (sorry, don’t have the sk1llz to make the subscript “2”).
Are we zipping this up now, or has that one been done (can’t bear to go back and check!)
No, you’re good, Maxine.
Now Maxine’s here we kinesin to molecular-moltor-related puns.
I’m more of a myosin woman than kinesin – Henry – scroll back up a-ways. I perfer my lattices more structured ;-)
What a cacophony <- my PhD gene
A true collection of geeks that anyone would be proud of. Well done all.