“I was trying to find ways to compare other people’s structures,” Jane said. “The entire first year or two [at Duke] was just learning how to do those drawings. So it was very gradual. I’m not an artist. I can’t draw other things all that well.” Since proteins are too small to be photographed directly, representations of them are often based off of earlier representations. One strategy their lab used was to paint the backbone of the wire model with a special paint that glowed under UV light. With the lights switched off, they took photos, and those photos ended up being a key inspiration for Jane’s later ribbon drawings of protein backbones. Focusing just on the backbone, it became a lot easier to show the folds and curls of the protein. But it was still not easy. “A lot of good illustration is, as you probably are aware, taking things away so that you’re left with the essential picture,” said Dave. “The issue, of course, is that you might cut off something vital and that it might never be recovered.” “The big deal is to really look at the drawing critically and ask whether it really shows what you mean it to show,” Jane said. “You have to try to forget all of what you know and try pretend that it’s new.” Diana Crow | Atom by Atom: Building Protein structures