“Signaling” gets installed in the Folin-Wu Room at HMS on Dec. 6, 2021. Image: Erin Palazzolo Loparo
It began with a desire to liven up the walls in the rooms where members of the Harvard Medical School Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology work, eat, and meet.
Two years and a pandemic later, the idea blossomed into a trio of abstract artworks evoking some of the department’s most notable scientific discoveries over the decades.
Adding even more meaning to the pieces that now hang in two conference rooms is that they were created by the spouse of a BCMP researcher in collaboration with faculty and staff.
Artist Erin Palazzolo Loparo’s work caught department chair Stephen Blacklow’s eye when her husband, Joseph Loparo, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS, included in a seminar presentation an illustration she’d made that was inspired by his work on DNA repair.
“It was representational and beautiful,” Blacklow recalled. “Our team thought it would be terrific if Erin were willing to design a similar art installation for the department.”
“We are delighted that she accepted,” he said, “and that, after the installation had to be delayed because of COVID, her work is now on display for all to enjoy.”
The mixed media pieces conjure three areas that BCMP has historically focused on and made significant contributions to: DNA replication, transcription, and translation; viral entry; and cell signaling.
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Generation
In the top half, a molecular complex known as a replicative helicase—here resembling a green pepper—unwinds the DNA double helix so it can be replicated. One strand passes through the helicase while the other travels toward the top, coated with orbs representing DNA-binding proteins.
Then, moving downward, a burnt orange RNA polymerase forms a bubble in which the DNA gets transcribed to RNA.
Toward the bottom, messenger RNA exits the nucleus, painted here in purple, and enters the cytoplasm, represented in sky blue, where the RNA is processed and translated into protein.
The work draws special inspiration from research done in the labs of Karen Adelman, Stephen Buratowski, Kevin Struhl, Gerhard Wagner, Johannes Walter, and emeritus professor Charles Richardson, the namesake of the conference room in which “Generation” is mounted.
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Immersion
The piece also honors department members’ findings about innate immunity, including those from the labs of Sun Hur and Hao Wu.
Three viruses are shown either fusing with or approaching a cell, whose membrane appears in orange. Poliovirus appears in the foreground, a nod to emeritus professor James Hogle, who first uncovered its structure.
To the left is rotavirus, representing Stephen Harrison’s revelations about how its surface proteins interact with cells to successfully penetrate the membrane.
Finally, “coming in like a meteor” in the upper right, said Loparo, is SARS-CoV-2, capturing this moment in history when many department members, along with colleagues across HMS, dropped everything to study the virus and provide a foundation for combating it.
“I had the unique challenge and privilege of imaging SARS-CoV-2 in real time while we were living it, while my children were lovingly swarming me in the house on their remote learning and I set up a makeshift studio in the dining room,” said Palazzolo Loparo. “I got to grapple in my own way with the virus and how it’s impacting all our lives. It was cathartic.”
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Signaling
The work shows a cell receiving signals from other cells and from its environment via receptors on the cell's surface. On the left is the Notch receptor, a major research area of the Blacklow lab.
To its right is a member of the vast G protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR, family, targets of an estimated one-third to one-half of all medicines on the market today and a specialty of faculty member Andrew Kruse.
Moving across the composition reveals integrins, a group of force-sensing and force-exerting receptors involved in everything from blood clotting to immune function that form a major focus of Timothy Springer’s lab.
When the receptors activate, they trigger a cascade of changes inside the cell that stimulates a response.
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