Gene Therapy: A Dramatization, starring President James Garfield
This is once again for Bi Sci 002. I had to explain how gene therapy works, so I had to dumb it down just a tad for non-biology majors after I understood the process myself. It was going to be pretty boring until I came across a profile photo of President Garfield, which sort of colored the feel of the whole thing. I still need to add another panel that will be a closeup of the cell at the end, but here it is for now. Turn your speakers up for full effect.
This sure makes science seem easy to me! Just wondering exactly what was the James Garfield tie-in. You said his profile colored the feel of the whole thing? What do you mean?
I was doing an image search for a person's profile when Garfield's photo came up in the search. Since it's in the public domain, I thought what the heck, I'll use it as is. The bizarre idea of using an ex-president's photo just sort of influenced the look of the whole animation.
Incidentally, it's widely thought that President Garfield probably would have lived despite his bullet wound had the doctors not probed the wound with their dirty fingers. Sterilization was a rather new idea at that time. He died of blood poisoning due to bacterial infection.
Well I made a few changes to the animation. First I added ol' Prez Garfield peeking around the corner in the beginning. Then I needed to add a part where the gene travels to the nucleus of the cell and join with the DNA inside the cell. I still have a couple little things to tweak, but this is what it'll look like more or less. As bizarre as it is, it teaches the concepts of the gene therapy process without going into unnecessary technical detail.