DNA-rainbow, A New Vision of Human Chromosomes

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."

Re:Lame

[mwvdlee]

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.

A pattern is a patterns is a pattern

[Ceriel Nosforit]

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.

Re:A pattern is a patterns is a pattern

[sporkme]

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 [wikipedia.org] 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.

Re:Dirty secret of HGP

[Adam Hazzlebank]

Human genome project scans just the 'upper level'

Yea, it's real hard to get at that 'lower level' DNA hidden right on the inside, geez.

Things are much more complicated there. It's like their binoculars captured upper boundary of the mountain range underneath.

I... I... don't even know how to respond to your rambling misinformed bullshit. Just No!!! That's not it! That's not it at all!

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I've seen that pattern before

[bl8n8r]

It's what the data segment of your app looks like when you accidentally dump it to vga video memory.

Re:A pattern is a patterns is a pattern

[radtea]

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.

An algorithm found in a dataset speaks of imperfect compression.

As to "what we TRULY are", we are everything that we are, neither more nor less, in all our messy complexity. Reductionism generates epistemological convenience, not metaphysical revelation. Although Platonists in reductionist clothing have been overstating their case for centuries.

Re:Hey, it looks like piet source code!

[Neeth]

Wouldn't it be interesting, though, if it turns out that the genome could be understood as a 'program', and a specially coded interpreter could process it... ... what would the binaries do?

The genome is a program and children are it's binaries. But please do tell me more about that interpreter stuff, that seems, uhm, nice.