A fundamental question had been worrying my lab (and maybe yours too) for decades. How much does the lipid composition of giant vesicles vary when they are made by different methods? We hesitated to test those compositions because every method of making vesicles has important applications in biophysics. We hoped that our data would not lead to exclusion of any methods which would restrict the field’s scientific toolbox.
The first hero of this story is graduate student Gunnar Goetz, who established a collaboration with experts in mass spectrometry at the University of Washington: Emily Pruitt, Amy Li, and Libin Xu. Graduate student Heidi Weakly then stepped up with heroic project management, and Kent Wilson with heroic data wrangling. We were relieved when our data showed that most methods commonly used to make giant vesicles result in only minor shifts in the lipid ratio relative to a stock solution.
From the relief that many of our colleagues expressed when they saw our poster at the 2023 Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, I surmise that they were as worried as we were that the differences in lipid compositions could have been much larger. I don’t think I have ever been thanked as many times and as earnestly for leading a research project. Subsequent suggestions from our wise Biophysical Journal editor (Rumiana Dimova) and our thoughtful anonymous reviewers made our manuscript into a paper of which I’m even more proud.
Next came the question of how to artistically depict our experimental system.
Over the years, I’ve admired scientists who use their art to communicate their science. A couple of examples in Biophysical Journal include Aurelia Honerkamp-Smith’s cartoons of membrane-bound proteins and Raghu Parthasarathy’s watercolors to illustrate intestinal bacteria disaggregation. I’ve also admired the art that graduate students have produced while earning their PhDs in my lab. Did you know that Aurelia is also a sculptor? Or that Cynthia Stanich is also an oil painter? For myself, I’m more comfortable with ink sketches.
My next hero is Seattle photographer Julie Graber, who invited me to sign up with her for a color theory class taught by local painter Daphne Minkoff. When Daphne asked why each of us was interested in the class, I said I had always been hesitant to use color, especially because I work in settings with colorblind colleagues, and I had never used oils. Daphne’s advice was the same that every scientist gives every mentee: make many experiments and fail fast. When something isn’t going right, be fearless about reworking the project in a new way or scrapping it all to start entirely anew.
The resulting cover image of the October 1 issue of Biophysical Journal is painted in Gamblin 1980 oils on Arches oil paper. The underlying painting of the upright microscope came from Daphne’s prompt to use analogous colors and a complement. The laboratory has a greenish hue because excitation light at ~560 nm scatters off the microscope stage. The giant vesicles floating in a collage (on Canson mixed media paper) above the microscope have colors consistent with the Texas Red dye used to image them, and they have spots because they have undergone liquid-liquid phase separation. In our paper, we chose a mixture of lipids that phase separated.
I was pleased to learn that some of my scientific training helped me work with oils. Some of my favorite pigments contain an alarming amount of toxic cadmium, and my lab experience made it easy to take Daphne’s advice to wear nitrile gloves. Plus, the delayed gratification of a PhD is excellent training in the patience needed for oils… right now it seems like my paintings will never truly be dry, but I know that eventually that day will come.
— Heidi M.J. Weakly, Kent J. Wilson, Gunnar J. Goetz, Emily L. Pruitt, Amy Li, Libin Xu, and Sarah L. Keller