Janet Iwasa listened as Samara Reek-Peterson struggled with a presentation. Reek-Peterson, a cell biologist, was trying to describe how dynein - a protein complex that acts as a molecular motor to transport cargo along the cells cytoskeleton - moves. The complex is at the heart of Reck-Petersons research, but she had only a styrofoam ball and pipe cleaners to demonstrate its complex actions at the faculty meeting. Iwasa, a scientific animator and a lecturer in the same department as Reck-Peterson at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, recalls thinking: "We can do better than that."
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