摘要
Dear Editor, A good picture is worth a thousand words. Schematic diagram of protein domain structures with functional motifs/sites in a concise and illustrative drawing is greatly helpful for a broad readership to grasp the old and novel functions of proteins rapidly. To estimate how many papers contain protein domain graphs, we went through all original research papers （excluding reviews and other articles） in five leading journals in this field, namely Cell, Nature Cell Biology, The Journal of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell and Molecular and Cellular Biology, published in 2007 and found that 27.6% （551 out of 1994 papers） contain at least one figure for protein domain structures （Supplementary information, Table S1）. Thus, scientific articles, particularly those in the field of molecular and cellular biology, often present schematic diagram of protein domain structures.
