How to draw beautiful illustrations in papers? The reason why scientific research drawing is a major that cannot be underestimated is that scientific research drawing is not a painting that emphasizes beauty and perception, but communicates with scientific research colleagues and the public in the form of images with many scientific research concepts and ideas that cannot be described in many languages. Although it is an image, it is actually a research result. Since it is a professional research achievement, there are usually many researchers in the same field who have images with the same structure in periodicals or special books. Before preparing the drawings, they should try to collect more than two published reference drawings (1). (2) Go to the online gallery or the scientific research drawing platform to be introduced in the next paragraph, and search for available drawings through keywords; (3) Determine the size of the picture to be drawn this time; (4) consider whether color is needed or black and white is better; (5) Draw a sketch of real size. If you are a master of hand-drawing, maybe when all kinds of drawing software are not very convenient, you can use hand-drawn images directly.
Many outstanding scientists are quite artistic, and Leonardo da Vinci is the representative. Looking back at the pictures of animal cells, human organs, plant vascular bundles, pictures of various viruses and DNA double helix seen in biology textbooks, it is not easy to draw these pictures beautifully and professionally. However, it is not difficult for scientists to convey new concepts or research results with images, because free or reasonable scientific research illustration drawing platforms and drawing software have sprung up. In addition to Canva and Pictochart, which are very useful in designing presentations and posters, there are many scientific drawing artifacts that researchers can't miss:
With 200,000 users, Biorender:Biorender is an online scientific research drawing platform tailored for more than 30 disciplines related to life sciences, with more than 20,000 free pictures. The latest coronavirus pneumonia-19 theme is also provided with professional pictures. As long as you have the intuition to use PPT, you can get started and provide free professional and paid use solutions. You must not miss it!
Edraw, a major in science and engineering, provides pictures commonly used in physics, mathematics and chemistry in the form of App, such as lenses, light sources, waves, molecular diagrams, chemical tests, laboratory equipment diagrams, circuit diagrams, 3D geometry, analytic geometry and so on.
Little painter in scientific research: Do you remember the little painter software in the era before Photoshop appeared? This is the free use of scientific research professional painters, who can freely illustrate, cut and adjust the size of pictures, increase the hand-drawing function, and have online communities to discuss intractable diseases in scientific research drawing.
Chart expert: For people who are used to Word, it's like making a special chart word processing page. Registration is free, and there are various business, engineering, software and other processes and system diagrams, which can save a lot of time.
Professionals who draw scientific research illustrations need to have a university-level scientific research background, as well as the artistic ability of illustrations or designers. In North America, at present, a few colleges and universities offer professional degrees in scientific research and drawing, and the number of graduates in one unit may be less than 10. In this era of image information explosion, there are more and more job opportunities in the new field of scientific research and drawing. Slash youth with scientific research and artistic background may wish to give it a try.
Graphpad, a preliminary study of classical drawing tools, most scientific research articles are inseparable from charts, especially graphics. Being familiar with some drawing software and displaying graphics in articles and PPT is an important part of scientific research training. Beautiful illustrated articles can add a lot of points to your work. Shengxin Baodian launched a series of tutorials ggplot2 (visual scripts, tools, routines, color matching) to explain how to draw high-value pictures through R language. Later, in order to make it easier to use, the team of Shengxin Baodian developed an online drawing tool, which supported the common graphics in 14 and some amplicon analysis. It is very popular, with an average of 400 visits every day and hundreds of thousands of visits, covering all continents in the world, and its functions are constantly increasing and improving.
Many friends in the background said that there was more demand for painting, so they sorted it out.
Graphpad
The use of, one is to spread knowledge, the other is to learn from excellent software, so that online drawing is getting better and better.
Graphpad, origin and SigmaPlot
It is three kinds of statistical mapping software commonly used by scientific research leaders. They have their own advantages and disadvantages and often need to be used together.
Today I'm going to introduce you to the basic usage of Graphpad.
The following is the welcome interface of Graphpad.
from
Block 1
It can be seen that GraphpadPrism6 provides users with
Six
Basic statistical chart selection;
Box 2
The following is an explanation of the selected chart. Click Learn More to view the official help document.
Box 3
You can choose a small classification under a certain kind of chart;
Box 4
Provide a demo data set for beginners to get started.
The description of the six statistical chart types and the statistical methods used are as follows:
Here, the second ready-made data set provided under grouping is selected for drawing demonstration. Click Create directly after selecting it.
After the previous step, we entered the main interface of graphpad operation.
Block 1
Shown here are our data. Each large group represents three different cell lines (wild type cells, GPP5cellline and GPP7cell line). Each row represents different treatments (serum starvation and normal culture); 5 parallel replicates in each group.
There are missing values in the experimental data, such as A:Y4 in the first row.
Box 2
Chu is a place.
directory tree
After importing data, click the graph to draw, as shown below:
In this interface, you can change the chart type according to your own needs. Beginners should dare.
Chaos point
Try different options yourself, and you will know what each part does. (trying to understand the truth)
The preliminary statistical chart above does not show the statistical analysis results such as the differences between groups, so how to show the differences between groups by adding *?
In the welcome interface, there is an option EnterandPloterrorValues All Readycalculedelsewhere, which means that the statistical analysis results made in other places can be imported from outside. Is it necessary to do calculations elsewhere before painting?
No need! Because you can do statistical analysis directly on Graphpad! ! ! Although the analysis can be done elsewhere first, it is not recommended. Direct operation is more convenient.
First, determine our analysis objectives:
1) Assess whether the differences between cell lines are beyond expectations;
2) Assess whether the difference between treatments exceeds the expected contingency;
3) evaluating whether the differences between treatments are consistent with each cell line;
4) Calculate the 95% confidence interval of the difference between cell lines with different treatments.
So we need to carry out
Two-factor analysis of variance
, click Analyze, select two-way ANOVA from the grouping analysis list, and accept all the default options in the dialog box. The humanization of Graphpad lies in that it will automatically identify the data structure of the current analysis and show users the optimal default analysis options.
After detailed analysis, you need some statistical knowledge. Don't be afraid to try it. You will find that when you click different options, the icon will change accordingly, which is very convenient for users to understand.
1) Part I: Experimental design. It is mentioned at the beginning that this set of data is unpaired, so choose the first one;
2) Part II: Multiple comparison options, that is, horizontal comparison, vertical comparison or oblique comparison;
3) Part III: Select some parameters for statistical analysis.
After the above settings are completed, click OK to display the analysis results in the main operation interface and save them in the results folder under the left directory tree.
1. Introduction to the graphic editing toolbar
1) Part I: Document operation module, similar to office, such as opening, creating, saving, copying and pasting;
2) The second part: data analysis, that is, statistical analysis of the previously demonstrated input data;
3) Part III: Graphic editing, which is the essence of software. You can edit and change graphs, such as graph type, axis, error bar, graph size, color, etc.
4) The fourth part: text editing, which can illustrate lines and add text on the statistical chart;
5) Part V: Graphic output, which can export, print or output the completed drawings to word/PPT.
2. According to the previous statistical analysis results, use the text editing tool to add the marks of differences between groups to the statistical chart.
1)draw: lines with different shapes can be inserted;
2) Writing: editing words, inserting formulas, etc.
3) Double-click any element in the graph to edit the shape, size and thickness of text and lines.
3. Coordinate axis adjustment
Click Change.
The second icon
, still in the picture.
Double-click coordinate axis
, bring up the coordinate adjustment tool;
See the figure for the overall setting of the coordinate axis and the setting of the X axis, and generally do not make too many changes;
This paper focuses on how to set the Y axis and make it
Truncated graph
This is a common problem in statistical charts.
The previous data is not very different and is not suitable for demonstration, so a histogram is generated. The left column value is too large, the right column value is too small, the right column almost disappears, and the picture looks very uncoordinated. Become a
Truncated graph
This problem can be well solved.
1) Click LeftYaxis in the coordinate settings (generally, drawing only generates the left y axis by default);
2) Select two sections at 2)GapsandDirection, that is, break the Y axis into two sections (you can also choose to break the Y axis into three sections according to the actual data);
3) In this section, set parameters (ranges) for the Y axis at the bottom and the top respectively;
4) Then, set the Y-axis digital label at the major scale interval under Regularlyspacedticks;
Length: 50%, half of the upper and lower sections;
Minimum value: the minimum value of the lower segment is 0, and the minimum value of the upper segment is150;
Maximum value: the maximum value of the lower segment 10 and the maximum value of the upper segment 200;
Majorticks: The size of each cell in the lower segment is 2, and the upper segment is 10.
In this way, the middle part of Y axis 10- 150 is cut off, and the whole picture looks much better.
4. Color modification
Click Change.
The last icon
, still in the picture.
Double-click post
, bring up the toolbox for adjusting parameters;
The basic operation of making a statistical chart with graphpad is probably the above content. It is not difficult to master the use of a tool, just try more. What is difficult is the statistical knowledge behind it. How to choose an appropriate statistical analysis method for your own data? When we know which data structures are suitable for different analysis methods, we can analyze the data of different experimental designs appropriately through analogy.