Drawing inspiration from science

Science is always seen as hard-core and hard to understand.

But could you imagine hundreds of people being captivated by the cover of a science magazine?

The achievement was completed after Wang Yixi and his team made the cover of an October issue of Structure, a US-based Cell Press journal.

The cover shows a Chinese ink painting of a farmer leading an ox across a bridge, followed by a boy with a bamboo basket on his back.

In addition to the jellyfish and lotus flowers in the river under the bridge, chemical compounds and elemental structures were highlighted and weaved into the picture.

It vividly depicts the process in which a special enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of an important organic compound is activated — the latest breakthrough by a Chinese scientific research team.

The drawing was one of many works by Wang and his team.

Over the past four years, they have come up with more than 10,000 visual works for academic papers across a variety of fields.

While studying chemistry at university, Wang said that he often came across an experimental preparation process that he had to explain, but the amount of text was too large and abstract.