MOLECULAR LANDSCAPES BY DAVID S. GOODSELL

This painting is part of “VAX,” a series of paintings exploring the molecular basis of vaccines. These paintings are designed to be accurate representations of the biological processes, but they also serve as a personal celebration of a miracle of modern medicine. The painting shows a key moment in the dialog between cells of the immune system, when an antigen presenting cell (top) is displaying a small piece of a virus (red dot at center) with MHC, and using it to stimulate the action of immune T-cells (bottom) through T-cell receptors.