research-article

3D Modelling and Visualisation of Heterogeneous Cell Membranes in Blender

Authors:

Mehmood Ghaffar,

Falk Schreiber,

Björn SommerAuthors Info & Claims

VINCI '18: Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction

Pages 64 - 71

https://doi.org/10.1145/3231622.3231639

Published: 13 August 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells have been in the focus of research for more than a decade, in particular due to its use as alternative source for energy production. However, the molecular processes in these cells are still not completely known, and 3D visualisations may help to understand these complex interactions and processes. In previous work, we presented the stereoscopic 3D (S3D) visualisation of a complete Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cell created with the 3D modelling framework Blender. This animation contained already a scene showing an illustrative membrane model of the thylakoid membrane. During discussion with domain experts, shortcomings of the visualisation for several detailed analysis questions have been identified and it was decided to redefine it.

A new modelling and visualisation pipeline based on a Membrane Packing Algorithm was developed, which can be configured via a user interface, enabling the composition of membranes employing published material. An expert user study was conducted to evaluate this new approach, with half the participants having a biology and the other half having an informatics background. The new and old Chlamydomonas thylakoid membrane models were presented on a S3D back projection system. The evaluation results reveal that the majority of participants preferred the new, more realistic membrane visualisation. However, the opinion varied with the expertise, leading to valuable conclusions for future visualisations. Interestingly, the S3D presentation of molecular structures lead to a positive change in opinion regarding S3D technology.

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Cited By

Franke LHaehn D(2020)Modern Scientific Visualizations on the WebInformatics10.3390/informatics70400377:4(37)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics7040037
Biere NGhaffar MDoebbe AJäger DRothe NFriedrich BHofestädt RSchreiber FKruse OSommer B(2018) Heuristic Modeling and 3D Stereoscopic Visualization of a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Cell Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics10.1515/jib-2018-000315:2Online publication date: 11-Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1515/jib-2018-0003

Index Terms

3D Modelling and Visualisation of Heterogeneous Cell Membranes in Blender
1. Applied computing
  1. Life and medical sciences
    1. Computational biology
      1. Imaging
      2. Molecular structural biology

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cover image ACM Other conferences

VINCI '18: Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction

August 2018

135 pages

ISBN:9781450365017

DOI:10.1145/3231622

General Chair:
Andreas Kerren,
Program Chairs:
Karsten Klein,
Yi-Na Li

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 13 August 2018

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VINCI '18

VINCI '18: The 11th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction

August 13 - 15, 2018

Växjö, Sweden

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Cited By

Franke LHaehn D(2020)Modern Scientific Visualizations on the WebInformatics10.3390/informatics70400377:4(37)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics7040037
Biere NGhaffar MDoebbe AJäger DRothe NFriedrich BHofestädt RSchreiber FKruse OSommer B(2018) Heuristic Modeling and 3D Stereoscopic Visualization of a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Cell Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics10.1515/jib-2018-000315:2Online publication date: 11-Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1515/jib-2018-0003

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