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