Rouge Research Group: Trends in Biotechnology — Joe Luciani

Designing cover art for a comprehensive review article offers a different kind of creative freedom compared to a standard research paper. After a highly collaborative brainstorming session with my wife, Jessica, to visualize the concept of 'endosomal escape' and gene regulation explored by her Rouge Research Group team in the UConn Chemistry department at UConn, we landed on the idea of a biometric security check. With the concept set for Trends in Biotechnology, I ran with the execution. Her team was analyzing nucleic acid nanostructures designed to act like a biometric marker, successfully tricking the outer cell membrane into granting them access. To visualize this "access granted" concept, we combined a giant human fingerprint with a cross-section of a cell. The white ridges of the thumbprint naturally swirl and morph right into the internal organelles, like the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum. I kept the background graphic very flat and vector-styled against a solid red canvas, which made the 3D-rendered, spiky blue nanoparticles visually pop as they successfully pass the security check and enter the cell.

Publication Reference: Gudipati, S.; Zhang, K.; Rouge, J. L. Towards Self-Transfecting Nucleic Acid Nanostructures for Gene Regulation, Trends Biotechnol., 2019, 37, 983-994. DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2019.02.004