2 ms·

you might like this render better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8 here's the artistic director for th

you might like this render better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8 here's the artistic director for the inner life of the cell (the worse one) going on and on about how "beautiful" the science of biology is: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_visualizing_the_wonder_of_a_living_cell https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_visualizing_the_won...

mncharity 7y ago
> artistic Yeah. One might for example reduce reinforcement of the big-empty-cell misconception by briefly showing more realistically dense packing, eg [1], before fading out most of it to what can be easily rendered and seen. But that would be less "pretty". Prioritizing "pretty" over learning outcomes... is perhaps a suboptimal for education content. > better But still painful. Consider those quiet molecules in proteins, compared with surrounding motion. A metal nanoparticle might be that rigid, but not a protein. One widespread issue with educational graphics, is mixing aspects done with great care for correctness, with aspects that are artistic license and utter bogosity. Where the student or viewer has no idea which aspects are which. "Just take away the learning objectives, and forget the rest" doesn't happen. More like "you are now unsalvageably soaked in a stew of misconceptions, toxic to transferable understanding and intuition - too bad, so sad". So in what ways can samplings of a protein's configuration space be shown? And how can the surround and dynamics be shown, to avoid misrepresenting that sampling by implication? It can be fun to picture what better might look like. After an expertise-and-resource intensive iterative process of "ok, what misconceptions will this cause? What can we show to inoculate against them? Repeat...". Perhaps implausibly intensive. I don't know of any group with that focus. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/8592248739 https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/8592248739
- dnautics 7y ago
  david goodsell's pictures are fantastic. I used to work down the hall from him!
  - mncharity 7y ago
    Agreed; cool, seems a neat guy. And much of his work is CC-BY, thus great for open education content. Hmm, the Wikimedia Commons capture of his work seems to be missing quite a bit. Oh nifty, there's now an interactive version of his 2014 "Molecular Machinery: A Tour of the PDB".[1] [1] https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ [] http://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery http://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery [] http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-date http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-date [] https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/
marcosdumay 7y ago
At least there is some water there. But what strange force is that holding proteins together when they are completely out of alignment, and keeping the water away from everything else?

mncharity 7y ago

> artistic Yeah. One might for example reduce reinforcement of the big-empty-cell misconception by briefly showing more realistically dense packing, eg [1], before fading out most of it to what can be easily rendered and seen. But that would be less "pretty". Prioritizing "pretty" over learning outcomes... is perhaps a suboptimal for education content. > better But still painful. Consider those quiet molecules in proteins, compared with surrounding motion. A metal nanoparticle might be that rigid, but not a protein. One widespread issue with educational graphics, is mixing aspects done with great care for correctness, with aspects that are artistic license and utter bogosity. Where the student or viewer has no idea which aspects are which. "Just take away the learning objectives, and forget the rest" doesn't happen. More like "you are now unsalvageably soaked in a stew of misconceptions, toxic to transferable understanding and intuition - too bad, so sad". So in what ways can samplings of a protein's configuration space be shown? And how can the surround and dynamics be shown, to avoid misrepresenting that sampling by implication? It can be fun to picture what better might look like. After an expertise-and-resource intensive iterative process of "ok, what misconceptions will this cause? What can we show to inoculate against them? Repeat...". Perhaps implausibly intensive. I don't know of any group with that focus. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/8592248739 https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/8592248739

dnautics 7y ago
david goodsell's pictures are fantastic. I used to work down the hall from him!
- mncharity 7y ago
  Agreed; cool, seems a neat guy. And much of his work is CC-BY, thus great for open education content. Hmm, the Wikimedia Commons capture of his work seems to be missing quite a bit. Oh nifty, there's now an interactive version of his 2014 "Molecular Machinery: A Tour of the PDB".[1] [1] https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ [] http://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery http://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery [] http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-date http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-date [] https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/ https://cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/molecular-machinery/

marcosdumay 7y ago

At least there is some water there. But what strange force is that holding proteins together when they are completely out of alignment, and keeping the water away from everything else?