If you’ve ever been tempted to categorize people as “right-brained” artists and “left-brained” analytical types, Holly Wichman and Bentley Fane have challenged that distinction.

Holly Wichman, Professor of Biological Sciences and co-founder of the Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Idaho, is an avid beader who has taken to beading some of the very viral structures she studies. Bentley Fane, a professor at the Bio5 Institute at the University of Arizona, also beads viral structures, finding that structures that are unstable in beads are rarely found in nature.

Holly and Bentley’s beaded viruses are displayed in the online gallery Crystal Structures: Viruses in Glass. Curiously, many of these pieces are not just straightforward duplicates of the viruses but artistic interpretations. Check out Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Vaccine to see what I mean. My favorite, however, is Prima Ballerina, which Holly describes as “tailed bacteriophage as dancer.” Holly and Bentley’s beadwork uses the very techniques you can learn in Bead&Button: herringbone, bead weaving, peyote stitch, netting, and fringe.