Journal Cover
Humanizing The Yeast Genome
Target audience
General
Supervisor
Professor Marc Dryer
Date completed
December 2020
Tools used
Maya
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Goals
To learn Maya by creating an editorial journal cover to highlight a research paper of choice. It aims to capture the idea of the “humanization of yeast” a process by which human genes are engineered into yeast cells in order to conduct higher fidelity disease modeling.
Process
Figure 1. Past Yeast journal examples
The layout and content styles are quite flexible for this journal.
Ideation
Figure 2. The first round of sketches
These initial thumbnails seem to convey genetic engineering fairly well, but the humanization part of the equation is lacking.
Figure 3. Thumbnail iteration
I wanted to leverage the DNA itself to explain the engineering of human (blue) and yeast genes (white) instead of relying on machinery or blueprint analogies. I was hoping to convey the creation of a humanized yeast through the twisting of the genes into a human shape.
Figure 4. Composite sketch
A higher fidelity sketch of what the end product will look like. With considerations for colors and proper journal cover layout.
Modeling and rendering
Figure 5. Model building in Maya
Figure 6. Model lightning using HDRI
Figure 7. Post render processing
Using Photoshop, the raw render from Maya was edited by:
Adjusting contrast and lighting
Changing color intensity
Adding a depth of field (doing this is Maya would have significantly increased render time)
References
Ito, Y., Uemura, T., & Nakano, A. (2014). Formation and Maintenance of the Golgi Apparatus in Plant Cells. International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology, 221–287. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-800180-6.00006-2
Kachroo, A. H., Laurent, J. M., Yellman, C. M., Meyer, A. G., Wilke, C. O., & Marcotte, E. M. (2015). Systematic humanization of yeast genes reveals conserved functions and genetic modularity. Science, 348(6237), 921–925. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa0769
Linders, Horst, Beest, & van den Bogaart. (2019). Stx5-Mediated ER-Golgi Transport in Mammals and Yeast. Cells, 8(8), 780. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells8080780
Osumi, M. (2012). Visualization of yeast cells by electron microscopy. Microscopy, 61(6), 343–365. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmicro/dfs082
Pretorius, I. S. (2016). Synthetic genome engineering forging new frontiers for wine yeast. Critical Reviews in Biotechnology, 37(1), 112–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/07388551.2016.1214945
Renderhub. (2016). The Sky Is On Fire 8K HDRI. RenderHub. https://www.renderhub.com/renderhub/the-sky-is-on-fire-8k-hdri.