Arcadia Science
Arcadia Science is a newly formed research institute in Berkeley, CA, co-founded by scientists from Dartmouth and UCSF. Arcadia aims to produce rigorously peer-reviewed, cutting-edge scientific research independent of the traditional academic model, which relies heavily on for-profit journals that restrict access to new findings.
I have been working with scientists at Arcadia to create graphics for a new research project, “Ticks as Treasure Troves: Molecular Discovery in New Organisms.” This project, along with the accompanying research publications “Performing Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics in Organisms with Minimal Reference Protein Databases” and “Robust Long-Read Saliva Transcriptome and Proteome from the Lone Star Tick, Amblyomma americanum,” marks the launch of Arcadia’s innovative research publishing platform. In these publications, my clients release preliminary findings and set the stage for the broader aims and potential impacts of their research.
As a foundation for further studies, this work focuses heavily on developing new genome, transcriptome, and proteomic resources for the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum. A primary aim of these graphics is to illustrate the significance of these new technologies. An hourglass motif serves as an overarching visual framework for their workflow and recurs throughout multiple figures. Accompanying data visualizations compare these new genomic resources to existing ones.
The life cycle of the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum. Throughout its life, the tick searches out three different animal hosts during what is known as a “questing” phase. Once attached, it feeds on the host’s blood for 1–2 weeks. To remain undetected for this period, the tick relies on a unique cocktail of proteins in its saliva, which are injected into the wound as it feeds. These proteins prevent the host’s blood from clotting and suppress the host’s immune response. Despite these important properties, little is known about which components of the tick’s saliva allow it to evade detection or how these proteins function in the host’s body.
Original sketch for life cycle figure and alternative stylistic option
Schematic workflow of research methodology, justifying the necessity of a good genome and transcriptome for down- stream proteomic analyses.
Schematic workflow of genomic analyses, compared to existing resources available in the literature.
