Thursday 11 June 2009

Genome Quilts!!!

I had to share this with you as I'm a science person so I love the combination of science and quilting. What a wonderful idea: using half square triangles to resemble the four nucleic acid bases found in DNA (A, T, C and G) and then encoding genes in quilts by stringing the HSTs according to the gene sequence.

Here's a link to the Genome Quilts website - check it out, the quilts turn out beautifully!

It reminds me of a Skandinavian exhibit at the World Exposition in 2000. I don't remember which country it was (Sweden?), but what they did was take annual rainfall data in their country, graph it, and then translate the graph onto music sheets and play it. It sounded beautifully!

Some people are so creative, and I bet Mal of turning*turning has something to say about this? :)

Cheers,
Christine

3 comments:

Cristin said...

So cool! I'm somewhat of a geek, so I can appreciate the science of it! ;-)

And I've never been to turning*turning before -thanks for sharing that link!

Heather said...

As a non-geek, I have to laugh at you and Cristin. lol The finished quilt does look cool but all the science stuff, not for me.

Malissa said...

Holy crap those are cool -- thank you for turning me onto them! (Although you sent it a month ago, I'm just getting around to it -- sorry!) What a good neighbor you are.

I particularly love that the quilts are being commissioned by hospitals. I'm on a committee to commission artwork for one of our new buildings and I might just have to show the committee these photos. Thanks!