Initially, Sarah Hurtado-Bagès shared with me her project related to scientific dissemination. With her boss, she imagined two different illustration to explain their work. I illustrated her work, inspirited by her draft.
Science business:
Two meters of DNA is compacted in each of your cells, CRAZY!!! isn’t it???
This compaction is made by small guys with weird names… as « macroH2A ». In her lab, they discovered that macroH2A influenced how your cells will eat properly. How does it work? well… macroH2A likes to closely interact, if you know what I mean…, with another guy: PARP1. This interaction is so intense that PARP1 does not care about food anymore = « PARP1! go on a diet NOW! »
In this case, cellular food is sustained by another guy: NAD+… little info just for you to know 🙂
Here comes the good news!!! If PARP1 does not eat too much, your cells can eat much better. Tadammmm this is how macroH2A takes care of our little cells.
blablabla well if you want to know more about it, you can find the references of this work below, or follow/contact her:
@SarahBages
Funny illustration:
For the first illustration, the histone variant macroH2A was represented as a bollard keeping PARP1 boat away from the powerhouse of the cells: the mitochondria boat
For the second illustration, Sarah imagined a world of poker and gangster.
I chose to turn characters into fantastic figures. The goal was to give them physical peculiarities related to their real function in the cell.
MacroH2A is represented as a poker dealer, regulating the distribution of NAD+ «poker card». Although PARP1 tries to steal NAD+ card, macroH2A is here to control the game. Thus, mitochondria are protected and remain in the game. I represented the face of the mitochondria character similar to its particular membranes… if you have no idea how it looks: google research « mitochondria », and look at how mitochondria membranes are sexy.
web sites
illustrations
Sarah Hurtado-Bagès’ articles
linehurtado.wordpress.com 