Biological data visualisation has a long history that goes back to ancient Greece but was essentially limited to drawings and more recently images. The past years saw a great increase in the percentage of data communicated with images, amounts and types of data collected. Developing innovative visualizations, methods for reducing dimensionality, and increasing visual literacy are key challenges. Using ribonucleic acids as an example, I will outline the history of its visualization, from an invisible molecule, to determination of its structure and function, and recent advances in life imaging on ongoing cellular processes.