Imagine peering through a microscope and watching a hidden world come alive: tiny plankton drifting through water collected from a local pond, or the earliest stages of fertilization and embryonic development unfolding in marine organisms. For biologist Christian Sardet, these moments revealed a breathtaking visual spectacle—one he has spent decades bringing to a broader audience.
After retiring, Christian Sardet devoted his time to his vocation—cells—and set out to write more about their origins and evolution.
Christian Sard
“I wondered what I could say [about cells] to people who are not really professional biologists,” explained Sardet. Now emeritus research director at the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the Marine Station of Villefranche-sur-Mer, Sardet transformed what he observed under the microscope into striking artistic compositions for his science art and communication book titled, Cells: The Illustrated Story of Life.
In his book, Sardet guides readers through the origins and evolution of living organisms, from the first protocells to the emergence of complex multicellular life. Paired with informative text, ranging from historical discoveries to modern findings, Sardet’s illustrations act as the ‘looking glass’ for readers to immerse themselves in the past and future of the cellular world.
Perhaps drawing subconsciously from his earlier work photographing plankton against black backgrounds, Sardet’s illustrations maintain that same aesthetic—luminous colors against an inky backdrop. “I thought that the fluorescent [marker] colors would really [be like] when you do confocal or fluorescence microscopy,” he said.
The Allure of Cells’ Dynamic Lives
Sardet’s scientific career began with research in comparative biochemistry and using X-ray diffraction to study protein structures before expanding into the mechanisms of fertilization and embryonic development in marine and planktonic organisms. Alongside his research, however, he maintained a deep commitment to science communication.
“I always had a kind of parallel activity of outreach to communicate about cells and different [topics],” Sardet said.
Over the years, he has explored photography, film, and illustration as ways to make the microscopic world more accessible. Creative expression, he explained, has always been central to his work. “The best way for me to express myself is through drawings,” he said. Many of those drawings were inspired directly by electron microscopy images from his research. And although plankton remained a major focus of his work for many years, he continually returned to cells—the subject he described as his true vocation from the beginning.
So, when he retired in the early 2010s, he dedicated his time to developing his book about cells, cells, and more cells—an endeavor that spanned the course of seven years. “[My illustrations were] all done by hand because I thought it was interesting to add a little more personality than having things that are too digital.”
In the margins of the book, Sardet includes a visual legend, denoting genetic elements like chromosomes with a blue line marker and organelles like mitochondria as pink dots, to aid readers in decoding the following full-page image, and so forth. These visual cues recur throughout the book, helping readers recognize cellular structures without overloading the image with arrows. Sardet also took inspiration from poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s “calligrams,” which are a form of visual poetry. In some images, instead of arrows, terms such as “chromosome” are written in blue and “chloroplast” in green within depictions of eukaryotic cells.
Some of Sardet’s images were inspired by calligrams. He incorporated text within his illustrations.
Christian Sardet
Exploring the Building Blocks of Life and Its Evolution
Throughout the book, Sardet explores the earliest descriptions of cells and the discovery of the microscopic world. For him, one of the project’s central motivations was the need for biologists to communicate the story of life more effectively.
He compared biology’s narrative to the Big Bang theory in physics—a concept widely recognized by the public as the prevailing explanation for the universe’s origin. “We have a Big Bang, which is basically [the last universal common ancestor] LUCA, and nobody has heard of it.” LUCA refers to the proposed primordial cell believed to have given rise to all life on Earth roughly 4.2 billion years ago. “So, I tried to tell the story from the LUCA to bacteria and archaea, to more complex types of cells and so on,” explained Sardet.
His aim was to help non-biologist readers decode complex biological concepts while also appreciating the functions and diversity of life forms that shaped scientific understanding. Among his own work, Sardet supplemented other images from historical sketches to snapshots of cells from fellow scientific illustrators and research institutions.
Among the organisms featured are giant protists—including the organism popularly known as “the blob”—which Sardet highlighted for their remarkable ability to solve mazes and regenerate. “Very few people realize that major discoveries were discovered on obscure organisms that are not the main models,” he said. “I wanted people to get a feeling for that a lot of the knowledge is coming from things that you probably haven't heard of in terms of organisms.”
By blending scientific history, storytelling, and vivid hand-drawn imagery, Sardet invites readers to see cells not simply as microscopic structures, but as dynamic living systems that connect all forms of life. Through Cells: The Illustrated Story of Life, he hopes to spark both curiosity and a deeper appreciation for the hidden world that underpins life on Earth.
