Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) are hosting an online art exhibition to celebrate artwork created through the PDB Art project in 2023. This virtual event, on Tuesday 19th September 2023 at 5:00pm BST, will mark the official opening of the 2023 virtual exhibition. It will include an overview of the artworks created in this years' project, plus a talk from Dr. Brady Johnston, whose Blender add-on 'Molecular Nodes' has led to a revolution in development of compelling molecular visualisations and animations.
Event recording
Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) hosted an online art exhibition to celebrate artwork created through the PDB Art project in 2023. This virtual event, on Tuesday 19th September 2023 at 5:00pm BST, marked the official opening of the 2023 virtual exhibition. It included an overview of the artworks created in this years' project, plus a talk from Dr. Brady Johnston, whose Blender add-on 'Molecular Nodes' has led to a revolution in development of compelling molecular visualisations and animations. We also announced awards for the best artworks in the project in 2023, voted for by the public. View the exhibition opening below or on our .
Event programme:
- Introduction to this year's PDB Art project
- A guided tour of this year's virtual exhibition
- Talk from Dr. Brady Johnston
- Insights from teachers and students involved in the project
- Q&A session with Brady and PDBe team
- Final remarks and close
About the project:
PDBe are working with school art departments around the world to create artworks inspired by the molecules of life.
PDBe maintains a free, worldwide database containing over 200,000 3D shapes of biological molecules important for scientific and medical research. The molecules are too small to see even with a normal microscope, and yet can form incredibly complex structures.
In this project, PDBe scientists help students explore the PDB database and different methods of depicting these molecules. The students, with support of their teachers, then use these structures as inspiration for the creation of artworks, many of which will be on display at the exhibition.
About Brady Johnston:
Dr Brady Johnston, from the University of Western Australia in Perth, works on novel RNA binding proteins using structural biology and biophysics. However, he also has passion for creating compelling data visualisations of complex topics, usually in biology. He is a self-taught 3D artist, using Blender to create amazing visualisations of proteins and their complexes, and he even teaches other interested biochemists through his YouTube channel ().
His Molecular nodes project is a fantastic tool for the molecular graphics community, allowing efficient import of structural biology data into the 3D modelling and animation program Blender.
For an idea of Brady's molecular visualisations, have a look at this video of a working flagellar motor shared through his Twitter account:
For more about Brady's work, visit his website at
