SciArt Magazine - All Issues December 2015 | Page 26
SPOTLIGHT
Molecular Animations
By Raphael Rosen
Contributor
The popular image of a biologist at work involves a
solitary researcher hunched over a microscope in a lab
or solving mathematical equations. In some ways this
notion is accurate, but it leaves out what is becoming
a crucial part of biological research around the world.
Like the wizards at Pixar, Disney, and Industrial Light
& Magic, biologists are now harnessing the power of
computer animation.
Thanks to Janet Iwasa, a research assistant professor
of biochemistry at the University of Utah, the general
public has become more aware of the importance of
animation within the sciences. Her focus on biochemical
animations led to her being named one of 2014’s leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. She was
named a TED fellow that same year. (You can watch
videos of her on YouTube.) Fast Company magazine called
her one of the 100 most creative people in 2012.
But she didn’t begin her career intending to focus
on animation. She graduated from Williams College in
1999 with a bachelor’s in biology with honors. “I was a
hard–core biologist in college,” Iwasa says. For example,
her undergraduate thesis research focused on the leech
hunchback protein, and with her thesis advisor Iwasa
authored a paper that appeared in the June 2000 issue of
the journal Development Genes and Evolution.
She first became interested in animation during her
graduate studies at the University of California, San
Francisco, where she was studying the framework within
cells that causes cells to move. Known as the ‘actin
cytoskeleton’, this network of fibers is made up of protein molecules. During her research, Iwasa focused on
understanding the dynamic processes that drive cellular
motion. Iwasa thought she had a concrete understanding of what was going on until 2002, when the lab next
to hers hired an animator to create an animation of a
protein. After viewing the result, Iwasa had an epiphany.
“The animation made me realize that I never really understood the biology,” Iwasa noted.
She realized that biologists had been operating at a disadvantage for a long time. They simply did not have the
tools that would help them understand the complex hap-
26
penings within cells. “People in general weren’t describing biology very well,” Iwasa pointed out. “They were
using arrows, stick figures, circles, and squares, but they
weren’t able to capture exactly what was happening.”
At that point Iwasa resolved to get the tools she
needed. She found that her status as a UCSF student allowed her to enroll in animation classes at San Francisco
State University for free, and she began spending five
hours each Friday learning animation basics. She began
by creating computer models of living room furniture.
She then started using the same software to animate biological entities. Her education continued after she got
her Ph.D. in 2006—thanks to a National Science Foundation grant, she spent a summer in Hollywood learning
the program Autodesk Maya at the Gnomon School of
Visual Effects.
For Iwasa, molecular animation helps biologists go past
their limited sensory abilities and explore hypotheses in
ways not possible before the rise of computers. “Most
biologists can’t go beyond what they can draw or make
with their hands,” she noted. “This way of modeling
complex phenomena is really limited.” The need for a set
of tools to help biologists visualize what they are studying is crucial because cells and molecules are too small to
see with the naked eye. “In molecular biology, you can’t
see what you’re studying,” says Iwasa. And because protein molecules are smaller than the wavelength of light,
you can’t use light microscopes to view them directly. As
a result, biologists struggle to comprehend the shapes of
molecules and how molecules interact.
Iwasa stresses that molecular animation are not experiments. After all, what happens in an animation depends
entirely on how someone configures the computer program. “I think of animation as a visual hypothesis,” says
Iwasa. Creating an animation is like exploring an idea.
Just as an engineer might build a prototype of a new
invention to see how it might behave, a biologist can
create an animation to determine whether her hypotheses make sense. “Animations make clear what you know
and what you don’t know,” says Iwasa.
SciArt in America December 2015