Bringing molecules to life

Janet Iwasa’s interest in animation took shape while she was earning her PhD in cell biology at the University of California, San Francisco. A neighboring lab at UCSF, as it turned out, specialized in motor proteins—including an enzyme called a kinesin, which transports cellular cargo by “walking” along microtubules. In 1999, a member of the lab animated the kinesin’s industrious strut to accompany a paper ( Science 2000, DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5463.88 ). After witnessing a finished animation of the spirited locomotion during a joint lab meeting, Iwasa began to wonder what parts of her own research might benefit from a little visual wizardry. So—in what would become a weekly trek over the course of her PhD work—Iwasa transported herself across town to San Francisco State University (which offered the art classes that her medical university did not). By the time Iwasa finished her PhD in 2006, she’d become so enamored by