This article was taken from the April 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This computer-generated model of the HIV virus was created by Janet Iwasa, a cell biologist and animator at the School of Medicine, University of Utah. The image is part of a four-year project, which started in 2013, to animate the lifecycle of HIV. "There're thousands of papers and an immense amount of data on HIV," says Iwasa. "Telling this story requires collaboration between different groups, and that's why it's important to have a visual hypothesis that you can share with other scientists."
Iwasa's career as a molecular animator started in 2004, when she first saw a computer animation of kinesin, the protein she was studying for her graduate research at the University of California, San Francisco. "I listened to a lot of presentations about its structure and how it moves, and I thought I understood everything.
But then I saw an animation and I realised I didn't." After undertaking animation courses -- including one on Maya, 3D animation software commonly used in Hollywood -- Iwasa then worked as an animator at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, with Nobel laureate Jack Szostak.
Next, Iwasa wants to turn animation into a research tool that can be used by any scientist. "We need to democratise it -- scientists can't take three months off to attend an animation course," says Iwasa, who is developing a program called Molecular Flipbook that will let researchers make their own 3D animations. "This software will allow biologists to upload their protein models, share them with other scientists and update them when necessary."