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DNA-rainbow, A New Vision of Human Chromosomes

Posted by samzenpus on from the painting-genes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two scientists have rendered amazing pictures using datafiles from the human genome project. They assigned different colors to the DNA and rendered images showing interesting patterns and strange structures of our chromosomes. It might be a groundbreaking new idea for displaying and maybe better understanding our genes. With its fascinating pictures it is a beautiful mix of science and art."

12 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Magic Eye? by SinVulture · · Score: 5, Funny

    No matter how hard I try, I can't see the sailboat!

    1. Re:Magic Eye? by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Informative
      for the bemused... here's the reference...

      Little Girl: [looking at a Magic Eye poster] Wow. It's a schooner.
      Willam Black: Ha ha ha ha. You dumb bastard. It's not a schooner... it's a Sailboat.
      Little Boy: A schooner IS a sailboat stupid head.
      Willam Black: [becoming enraged] You know what. There is NO Easter Bunny. Over there, that's just a guy in a suit.
      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  2. Lame by nacturation · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the same principle as the Bible Code which has been shown over and over to be rubbish. If you line things up in various ways you can find just about any pattern you want given sufficiently long input.

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    1. Re:Lame by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sound like they're claiming they made nice pictures using the genome data to generate them. Nothing more. Humans tend to see patterns in everything, it's in our nature. So no wonder we see patterns in those pictures. We'd probably see patterns in them if the input was purely random data.

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    2. Re:Lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, no, it isn't.

      The Bible Code people claimed that their ability to find patterns in a particular text of a particular religion both validated the truth of that religion and also allowed predictive ability on world events.

      These guys are saying, "Hey look, if you display a bitmap representation of genomes, they look pretty."

      I am sure that you can see the difference between these two claims.

  3. Your chromosomes... by Riktov · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...are heavily fragmented. This could degrade performance in creating offspring.

    Would you like to optimize your chromosomes?

    [Yes] [No] [Cancel]

  4. Hey, baby. . .. by gardyloo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Taste the rainbow!

  5. Oops by tehSpork · · Score: 5, Funny

    It looks like the DNA has been Slashdotted.

    Hopefully the next version will have developed a natural defense mechanism to handle the strain Slashdot puts on servers. :)

  6. A pattern is a patterns is a pattern by Ceriel+Nosforit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't matter what the pattern is, nor what it means. If the pattern is there, then the pattern is there. What does matter is what you DO with the pattern, and maybe why it is there.

    Any pattern can be modeled in an algorithm, and from this algorithm it can be extrapolated. A set of data without any patterns is noise; random data. An algorithm found in a dataset speaks of a function, and understanding functions in the human genome leads to better understanding of what we truly are.

    --
    All rites reversed 2010
    1. Re:A pattern is a patterns is a pattern by sporkme · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Referencing the earlier mentioned movie, Pi:
      Sol Robeson:

      Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
      Just that a pattern exists does not give meaning to the pattern. The Golden Rectangle was applied to the human body by Da Vinci and others, but no great significance can be discerned except that vertebrates tend to be symmetrical. The heavens did not burst forth as our creator revealed himself. The DNA pattern is more of the same - searching for patterns tends to yield them eventually.
      --
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    2. Re:A pattern is a patterns is a pattern by VirusEqualsVeryYes · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That can be applied to sightings of many other things.

      The problem is, how does one determine which patterns indicate something and which patterns are just convincing illusions?

  7. Re:Good Science/Art websites? by vonmeth · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html