How might I illustrate how an experiment using a new jellyfish genetic model can help scientists understand the evolution of nervous systems and the brain?

The client

Brandon “Brady” Weissbourd, Caltech.

Background

Brady uses jellyfish to study nervous system evolution, development, regeneration, and function. In 2021, while at Caltech, Brady published a landmark study in Cell magazine, explaining how they created the first powerful genetic model for studying a jellyfish’s nervous system, the transparent jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica. The Clytia hemisphaerica is the equivalent of how important fruit flies are to a lot of biology studies.

The study changed how scientists think about “brainless” animals, learning some types of decision-making can emerge from local groups of neurons working together rather than a centralized brain, challenging the assumption that brains are necessary for all complex behaviors.

My work

I was commissioned to create the visual abstract for the article “A genetically tractable jellyfish model for systems and evolutionary neuroscience” by Brandon Weissbourd et la. The requirement was to explain the 40-plus-page paper to other scientists using a single image and create supporting resources for the image figures used in the paper.

Other details

For more information on the paper, please visit https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01269-1