Illustrator and Oxford postdoctoral researcher of cell biology of parasites, Richard Wheeler has designed a simple and easy to read infographic on metabolism. Metabolism encompasses all the chemical reactions necessary for your body to keep running, including turning food into energy and creating amino acids and the chemical bases for DNA. Researchers are especially interested in how these chemical processes interact, as metabolism plays a vital role in disease and how our bodies respond to drug treatments.
In the graphic the “subway” lines represent metabolic pathways. The pathways trace how one chemical is transformed into another chemical, catalyzed by a series of enzymes. It’s not a comprehensive illustration of every chemical reaction involved in metabolism but it’s still a handy graphic. Wheeler has more of his work accessible at his deviantART site and website.
