Bringing It All Together Now: Targeted Protein Degradation
Audience - it’s one of the most important criteria to understand when creating educational materials. Who are they, where are they, what do they know, what do they not know…all determines how to approach your image design. When faced with a complex scientific mechanism, it becomes even more important to understand your audience. For example, one subject I’ve illustrated is PROTACs (PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras) and Molecular Glues. For an educated audience, this might mean “a bifunctional molecule that binds to a protein of interest and E3 Ubiquitin Ligase, resulting in targeted protein degradation”. For the general public, this might mean “a molecule that helps eliminate unwanted proteins in the body”. Developing an appropriate scientific message is important for successful understanding for everyone. Here, I will give examples of different audiences all for the same subject.
Educated Science Audience in External Labs
As an editorial piece, it was important to highlight that this ACS paper discusses chemical structure differences between moieties of PROTACs and the success of one in particular, Phenyl Dihydrouracil. The journal is for medicinal chemists, who should be familiar with specific structures. Without context, it’s hard to understand why one might be better than the other.
The other image is on molecular glues for a St. Jude publication. I used actual glue to draw focus to something never seen in molecular settings. The goal is to get them to read the publication, so using eye-catching setups was one solution to get some clicks.
General Audience in the Educational Sphere
For this project, I was asked to develop an image for a blog article on PROTACs for Doximity.com. As a general medical news source, I knew the audience may not be interested in detailed chemical structures or finer details of the PROTAC mechanism. It would maybe be more beneficial to encourage readers by displaying eye-catching colors, a middle focal point, and 3D proteins.
Mid-level Educated Audience
I developed a thorough molecular infographic on the subject of PROTACs. It was used to educate those external to the chemical biology field, but who understand other aspects of molecular science. Using a bit more description of certain aspects of the mechanism and 3D protein structures, I tried to create a visual environment that promoted easy learning.