Painting a picture of autophagy in Drosophila.

Drawing as a way of understanding things better/easier is in human nature, from textbook images through the models and graphical abstracts published in scientific papers to chalk talks during the academic job interview process. As a molecular cell biologist and geneticist, I always find it easier to show a microscopy image to engage a lay audience with the beauty of cells and explain the tremendous complexity one can extract from a single microphotograph. Unfortunately, I do not think that we as a science community are in general doing the best job at reaching out to the public and communicating what we do, why it is important and how beautiful and exciting our work is.