Ten Simple Rules for Creating Biomolecular Graphics
This work offers practical guidance for researchers in fields like medicine and biology who need to create molecular illustrations, but it is incremental as it compiles existing best practices rather than introducing new methods.
The paper addresses the challenge of creating effective biomolecular graphics, which are crucial for communicating complex biological information, by providing a set of ten simple rules as a guide for beginners.
One need only compare the number of three-dimensional molecular illustrations in the first (1990) and third (2004) editions of Voet & Voet's "Biochemistry" in order to appreciate this field's profound communicative value in modern biological sciences -- ranging from medicine, physiology, and cell biology, to pharmaceutical chemistry and drug design, to structural and computational biology. The cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words is quite poignant here: The information 'content' of an effectively-constructed piece of molecular graphics can be immense. Because biological function arises from structure, it is difficult to overemphasize the utility of visualization and graphics in molding our current understanding of the molecular nature of biological systems. Nevertheless, creating effective molecular graphics is not easy -- neither conceptually, nor in terms of effort required. The present collection of Rules is meant as a guide for those embarking upon their first molecular illustrations.