Through an artistic piece, I was able to show alpha-helices changing into beta sheets.
My piece represents the chaos that wrongly-folded prions can create within a host. The main focus is the faint oval with circles representing PrPC and PrPSc. The one black circle that has “exploded” represents the spread of scrapes. As you can see, the mis-folding begins to move into the far-right circle. Wild, web-like figures tie the piece together and attach to prion alpha-helices. Their presence allows for a semi-abstract piece – there is a clear depiction of the prions which connects every segment of the work. Overall, I really enjoyed expressing a scientific concept through abstract art. The limitations we had to follow (to only use air through a tube, water, and a stick on paper), allowed for creative artistic experiments. Figuring out what best conveys a scientific theory through this type of art was both entertaining and creatively stimulating.