Robert Kosara has a new blog-post online about the important advances created by Jane Richardson in visualizing proteins. Finding a clever way of representing the thousands of atoms and molecular bonds in simple, yet beautiful, strands and ribbons easily earns her a metnion as part of “Ada Lovelace Day”.
Scientists only figured out how to determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins in the 1970s. When Jane Richardson was writing a review article about the proteins whose structure was known in 1980, she needed a consistent way of showing them. It was clearly not very practical (or useful for understanding) to draw thousands of atoms that were part of a complex, three-dimensional structure.
via A Visual Language for Proteins: Jane Richardson | EagerEyes.org.
Ah, these are beautiful. Thanks for sharing Randall.