A sideways view at the world though a scientific looking glass.
Most of my designs are just the central cartoon figure. This is basically laziness. I kid myself that it’s all to do with simplicity of the main image, not wanting to add unnecessary detail or just that I can’t draw backgrounds. Really though it’s because creating an effective background, simple or detailed, takes a lot […]
This design came about by accident. I’d been working for a long time on a detailed picture of an astrocyte in a garage as an analogy for synaptic repair. The challenge I set myself was to do a full composition, not just a cartoon cell. Backgrounds are not my strong point. In one version I’d […]
I can’t really claim a deep interest in manga as the inspiration for this and much as I like Japanese artists like Hokusai (my toilet wall is a giant mural of the Great Wave) neither is his influence evident here. I’m afraid the reality is that I was a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja […]
Trying to weigh up the relative importance of different types of neuron is pretty much a waste of time. Despite this many neuroscientists have their favourites, just as many geneticists have their favourite gene and I imagine astronomers have their favourite galaxy. Some will glory in finding the most obscure or quirky example, some will […]
I’d had the E. coli/e-coli pun kicking around my list of cartoon ideas for a long time but had never got round to bringing it to life. Sometimes you just need the right catalyst. In this case, it was @Pupsmd_micro bringing my attention to the Microbe Art competition for International Microorganism Day, part of FEMS, […]
Melanophages are macrophages that patrol your skin acting as an important line of defence from pathogens and particles that can enter the body through cuts and scrapes. Their name comes from their appetite for melanosomes, small droplets of melanin, the skin pigment produced by melanocytes. When skin is tattooed, the ink pigments are a rainbow-coloured […]
We think of bones as being the most stable part of the body that may still lie somewhere thousands of years from now, exciting future archaeologists. Despite their durability, bones are shaped throughout life and not only during growth or after injury. Changes in the load placed on them, as muscles get stronger or weaker, […]
The average red blood cell, known as an erythrocyte, rushes round your circulation for an average of 120 days. Over this time it gradually gets damaged, some of this is due to external shear forces from squeezing through capillaries or being blasted along arteries. Most of it is actually internal; carrying oxygen is a hazardous […]
As is well known to all fans of salad dressing, oil and water don’t like to mix. This creates a problem for the body when it needs to transport fats and oils (collectively called lipids) and the many hormones and vitamins that are fat-soluble. They need to be wrapped up with specialised proteins to create […]
You breathe over 10,000 litres of air a day (that’s 2200 gallons for my American friends or any time travellers from 1900) even when you don’t run for the bus or climb 10 flights of stairs. With each lungful you also inhale countless microscopic particles of dust, viruses, pollen, chemicals, spores. Some of these are […]