This digital painting was created as a part of the 2020 CellSpace workshop, hosted by David Goodsell. All the artwork for the online show, titled “New Ways of Living: Understanding the Science of COVID-19,” can be viewed at this link. My artwork depicts three respiratory epithelial cells progressing through an infection with SARS-CoV-2. Visible in the middle and bottom cells, endoplasmic reticulum has been transformed into a replication organelle, featuring double-membrane vesicles where viral RNA synthesis occurs. A close look reveals a molecular pore spanning this double membrane, releasing the RNA so that it can be encapsidated, travel to a virus assembly site, and bud into an endosome as a new virus. The hot pink cell in the bottom corner is releasing many new viruses, allowing infection to spread to new cells, tissues, and people.

License: This image provided for free use under a CC-BY-4.0 license. For use of this image, please acknowledge Mol Mir.

Below, you can view some older images to take a look at my process & see how I arrived at the final representation.