Art Can Bring Out the Best in Science

Every cell in the body carries many mutations in its DNA, some known to be harmful based on studies of dissociated cells in monolayer culture. Yet many mutations are found in normal cells from normal organisms. What keeps those mutations from producing harmful alterations, including cancerous growths in apparently normal cells from normal organisms? I had written a review article about this problem, which was favorably received by the editor of BioEssays, but he asked me to provide a figure to help catch the attention of the readers. I found a set of photomicrographs (Fig. 1) in the first article of a series in the American Journal of Pathology [1], which showed that dissociated rat liver cancer cells of stem cell origin would take on the appearance and regulated growth behavior of normal liver cells when they were injected directly into the normal liver of a rat. The photomicrographs illustrated these results, but the images were in subdued colors and difficult for non-experts to analyze. In addition, there were many photomicrographs, which required careful selection of those that best illustrated the major theme of my article.

My wife, Dorothy Rubin, is an artist who also helps me by typing my handwritten articles and editing them. I thought that highlighting the major features of the article with paintings based on the most appropriate photomicrographs would heighten the reader’s interest and understanding, and I asked her to undertake the task of creating the illustrations. She refused at first, saying she is not a scientific illustrator and that she did not understand what the micrographs were about. However, I pressed my case, saying I would explain their significance and those aspects that needed to be abstracted. She then realized the potential value of her art in enhancing the text and went to work.

Fig. 1.

Photomicrographs of frozen sections of normal and cancerous rat liver cells injected into the intact livers of rats, which inhibits their multiplication. The injected cells are green, and the cells of the intact liver have red nuclei and orange cytoplasm (see Color Plate G No. 2). (C) A moderately cancerous liver cell 87 days after injection into the intact rat liver. (E) A rapidly multiplying cancer 20 days after injection of a liver cancer cell under the skin of a rat. (G) Partial inhibition of multiplication by a highly cancerous liver cancer cell about one month after injection into the intact rat liver. (Note: Fig. B is not discussed.) (Reprinted from Am. J. Pathol. 1993 142: 1373–1382 with permission from the American Society for Investigative Pathology.) (C), (E) and (G) in Fig. 1 are reproduced as (B), (C) and (D), respectively, in Color Plate G No. 2.

Our interactions were not uniformly harmonious during development of the project, but they improved as it became apparent that she was achieving a dramatic representation of the main points of the article without sacrificing accuracy (Color Plate G No. 2). The impact of the message was brought out by livening up the colors and eliminating extraneous details in the original photomicrographs. Both of us were pleased when the editor not only reacted positively to the paintings but thought enough of them that he chose one as the cover illustration for the May 2006 issue of BioEssays, which contained the article [2]. Several of my scientific colleagues were enthusiastic about the contribution of the paintings to comprehension of the major themes of the article. I must admit that our non-scientific friends were more interested in the paintings than the science, but they at least know there is a scientific issue involved.

That scientific issue was encapsulated in the definition of life by Rollin Hotchkiss, a pioneer of molecular genetics, as “the repetitive production of ordered heterogeneity” [3]. The concept was elaborated by Paul Weiss, a prominent embryologist [4], and became the keystone of the fundamental biological theory developed by the eminent theoretical physicist Walter Elsasser [5]. In the latter case, it became the principle of ordered heterogeneity whereby “there can be regularity in the large where there is...