Blending the human genome with art

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a microbiologist and began her career in medical genetics. "Combining disciplines you may not have combined otherwise, you can answer questions from a broader perspective."

That was ultimately the feat of Ecce Homology.

The seeds of the project were planted three years ago when West was teaching a college science lab for non-science majors at UCSD. Students were using the Web version of Blast to complete homework on comparative genomics, without fully understanding how the algorithm works or scoring the genetic sequences to ascertain right answers.

"It relates to a broad spectrum of people (from little kids to scientists) and gets them thinking of the relationship between science and art."

--Carmela Cunningham, director, UCLA's office of information technology

When she asked various colleagues about the tool, she learned that it had become a de facto standard in the scientific community, often the first place researchers went to run queries on gene sequences. Tens of thousands of biologists run DNA sequences into Blast daily. They typically submit 200 to 400 base pairs, or letters, of genetic code to be matched against the billions of letters for known genes.

Despite its ubiquity, many researchers didn't fully understand it either, or blindly accepted the default settings or learning aids of the search tool.

That sparked West's artistic curiosity about a technology that's broadly influencing so much knowledge but is little understood by the public.

That eventually led to a collaboration between 10 other scientists and artists from three universities--UCSD, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. The group represents the fields of molecular biology, new media, computer graphics, computer science and engineering, performance and bioinformatics. Technology companies including Intel and NEC also signed on to sponsor the work.

The project itself is named after Friedrich Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, an autobiographical book that expounds on how one becomes what one is.

In order for the project to be useful to scientists it needs more work, West said. She and her group, who work on a volunteer basis, plan to eventually include calligraphic DNA data in Ecce Homology, which will essentially require creating a new language. Right now, the software maps only the protein data of gene sequences.

For Siggraph, the software was updated to enhance the visual interface and improve the responsiveness of the tool for the tens of thousands of people expected to interact with it at the conference.

The project originally debuted at UCLA's Fowler Museum in November 2003 to great public interest, according to Carmela Cunningham, a director at UCLA's office of information technology, which supported the project.

"It relates to a broad spectrum of people (from little kids to scientists) and gets them thinking of the relationship between science and art," Cunningham said.