In honour of David Goodsell's retirement this year, I was invited by one of my collaborators, Monica Zoppè, to contribute illustrations to a special edition of the Journal of Protein Science (1). I jumped at the offer immediately. David Goodsell has been a huge influence in the field of scientific communication. His colourful works have shaped the mental models of many scientists and science enthusiasts. With the understanding of a scientist and the heart of an artist, David Goodsell has captured the intricacies of cells on the molecular and cellular level with beautiful accuracy.
For my contribution to this special edition, we visit a eukaryotic cell like a tourist would. The goal is to demonstrate the scale differences inside a eukaryotic cell. To this end, we bring the cell to our level by multiplying everything 10 million times. On the Ten Million Times (TMT) scale, we can relate molecular objects to our everyday experience (2). There are molecules the size of fruits and animals, cytoskeletal elements resembling ropes, and a nucleus the size of a huge dome, just to name a few.
To bring all these elements into perspective, we relate to David as an intuitive scale bar in this fictious world. Seeing molecular objects in relation to human size can help us understand their smallness or enormity with our instinctual understanding of size differences. Additionally, I hope that using David's likeness is seen by him as a token of appreciation for all his beautiful contributions.
Except where otherwise noted this work is protected under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This work was created in Adobe Fresco. I built the cellular references in Blender to retain accuracy. I used the following models from the PDB as references: 5KY6, 3PGM, 4B4T, 1J5E, 1ASY, 2W4U, and 1EHZ. David's likeness was captured from his interview with the Wellcome Collection (3) and his picture at the booth for the RCSB Protein Data Bank in 2013 (4)
References:
1. Zoppè M, Williams VCJ, Briegel A. Cellular and molecular representations: Following the lesson of David Goodsell. Protein Science. 2026;35(6):e70616. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.70616
2. Zoppè, Monica. (2017). Towards a perceptive understanding of size in cellular biology. Nature Methods. 14. 662-665. 10.1038/nmeth.4300. 3.
3. "A profile of David Goodsell : Wellcome Image Awards winner." by Wellcome Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
