Advocation for Biodiverse Emojies

Associate Professor Andrew White from the Department of Chemical Engineering recently weighed in on an interesting look at adding biodiversity to Bitmoji by Los Angeles Times. Ecologists are calling for adding more flora and fauna to Emojipedia, the global directory of pictograms recognized by the international Unicode Standard, in order to help spur global conversations about the natural world.

In the article, Andrew says the need extends to the microbiological level. He attempted to get a representation of a protein added to the official roster but was rebuffed.

“Much of the discussion of the pandemic (e.g., the infamous “spike protein”) and the latest drug discovery advances (e.g., CRISPR gene editing, biologic drugs) are based on proteins, but we have no emoji for them,” says Andrew. “Emojis also help in English, where words like protein can mean the macronutrient from food or the concept from microbiology."

Read more at the Los Angeles Times website.