3D animation for integrative modelling of complex molecular mechanisms

Abstract

Understanding complex molecular mechanisms requires bridging broad scales in space and time, and using complementary experimental approaches to do so. Beyond data collection, researchers must then synthesize multimodal and multiscale information into coherent models, and visual representations have long played a central role in this effort.

While 2D schematics effectively summarize a few key concepts and findings, they often cannot capture the richness of knowledge that the scientific community has accumulated over years of research on a given topic. 3D animation, increasingly used for science communication, has more to offer than the visual appeal of the final product. What is still under-appreciated is how creating an animation can significantly contribute to research through hypothesis exploration and scientific discourse: by integrating heterogeneous data and forcing us to make every assumption explicit, the process often reveals contradictions between datasets, gaps or differences in individual hypotheses, and new ideas to test.

I will present recent projects that used 3D modelling and animation to build intuitive models of complex molecular mechanisms, highlighting this approach as both a communication tool and a driver of scientific insight.