My dissertation paper came out today in Chemistry & Biology. The cover is an illustration I made for it under the line "Crosslinker Brings Kinase-Substrate Pairs Into Focus."
Kinases transfer a γ-phosphate from ATP to a substrate hydroxyl, the small-molecule ATP is a promiscuous binder, and so the specificity of the reaction lives in the kinase-substrate interaction itself. I designed an ATP analog that, when held in the active site by a real substrate, forms a covalent bond between the two proteins rather than completing the phosphate transfer. The pair gets stuck together to enable identification.
The metaphor
"Bringing kinase-substrate pairs into focus" describes what this cross-linker does. Most of biology — at the scale where I work — is impossible to directly visualize. The job of the tool, whether it's chemistry or microscopy or molecular illustration, is to bring one specific thing into focus so it can be studied.
I'm finishing the dissertation now and starting to think about what comes next. Whatever it is, I want it to keep that property. Build the lens. Bring the thing into focus. Then let other people use the focus to learn something I couldn't have predicted.