This watercolor illustration shows a cross-section through the blood, with blood serum in the upper half and a red blood cell in the lower half. In the serum, look for Y-shaped antibodies, long thin fibrinogen molecules (in light red) and many small albumin proteins. The large UFO-shaped objects are low density lipoprotein and the six-armed protein is complement C1. The red blood cell is filled with hemoglobin, in red. The cell wall, in purple, is braced on the inner surface by long spectrin chains connected at one end to a small segment of actin filament.
(This is the first place winner of Art in Crystallography Prize at 2005 ACA Annual Meeting)
Blood 2,000,000x
