About The Artwork
A cover illustration for the Kaestner Lab of the University of Pennsylvania
Year: 2022
Published on the cover of the journal Cell Metabolism (Volume 34 Issue 9) to accompany the manuscript "3D chromatin maps of the human pancreas reveal lineage-specific regulatory architecture of T2D risk in cell metabolism" by Su et al.
On the cover: In this issue, Su et al. (pp. 1394–1409) establish the first cell-type-specific three-dimensional chromatin maps of the major cell types of the human pancreas. By integrating 3D contact maps with single-cell gene expression and chromatin accessibility maps, they establish that the connections between candidate causal variants affecting type 2 diabetes risk and their putative target effector genes are cell-type stratified and emphasize previously underappreciated roles for alpha and acinar cells in diabetes pathogenesis. The cover art uses three different flowers to represent the alpha cells, beta cells, and acinar cells that were profiled and visualizes the divergent 3D chromatin structures between the three cell types. Illustration by Stacie L. Bumgarner, PhD.