Biomedical Data Visualization
Quantification of Cellular
Organelle Size
Quantification of Cellular
Organelle Size
Award of
Merit
2019
Designed for undergraduate students, this illustration visualizes the quantification of organelles of a typical mammalian cell.
STORY
Scale at the sub-cellular level is often misrepresented in textbook illustrations, which may lead to students developing misconceptions about the structure of cells. Furthermore, information about the scale and properties of organelles is fragmented and difficult to find. This illustration aims to provide students with a more complete understanding of the structure and composition of a typical mammalian cell.
To achieve this goal, I built the 3D model of the cell and organelles based on proportions and dimensions as published in Cell Biology by the Numbers (Milo and Phillips, 2015), and recent articles. A graphical legend and colour-coding scheme were designed to link the central visual with the scientific data, and a simple black background was incorporated to draw attention on the data visualization.
DESCRIPTION
Year
April.2018
Course
BMC Technology 2:
Data and Information Visualization
Client
Andrea Gauthier
Audience
Undergraduate Students
Format
Print, Poster
Medium
Pixologic Zbrush
Maxon Cinema4D
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
PROCESS WORK
Production
03
REFERENCE
Frey, Terrence G., Guy A. Perkins, and Mark H. Ellisman. "Electron tomography of membrane-bound cellular organelles." Annu. Rev. Biophys. Biomol. Struct. 35 (2006): 199-224.
Sengupta, Debrup, and Adam D. Linstedt. "Control of organelle size: the Golgi complex." Annual review of cell and developmental biology 27 (2011): 57-77.
Gurel, Pinar S., Anna L. Hatch, and Henry N. Higgs. "Connecting the cytoskeleton to the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi." Current biology 24, no. 14 (2014): R660-R672.
Chan, Yee-Hung M., and Wallace F. Marshall. "Scaling properties of cell and organelle size." Organogenesis 6, no. 2 (2010): 88-96.
Chan, Yee-Hung M., and Wallace F. Marshall. "How cells know the size of their organelles." Science 337, no. 6099 (2012): 1186-1189.
Reber, Simone, and Nathan W. Goehring. "Intracellular scaling mechanisms." Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology 7, no. 12 (2015): a019067.
Levy, Daniel L., and Rebecca Heald. "Mechanisms of intracellular scaling." Annual review of cell and developmental biology 28 (2012): 113-135.
Edens, Lisa J., Karen H. White, Predrag Jevtic, Xiaoyang Li, and Daniel L. Levy. "Nuclear size regulation: from single cells to development and disease." Trends in cell biology 23, no. 4 (2013): 151-159.
Milo, Ron, and Rob Phillips. Cell biology by the numbers. Garland Science, 2015.
