We used to say that genes were the instructions that build us. This is still true, but increasingly we realise that there is a lot of other lengths of DNA replicating and dancing around these instructions, kicking up new possibilities, turning on this bit and turning off that bit, making this stretch a bit more prone to variation, making that bit less prone to variation. Professor Susan Wessler works to reveal the beautiful world of the dancing DNA (transposable elements) that surround our genes and this wallpaper is a celebration of this research.

Most people are familiar with the idea that your children will have a different DNA sequence to yours and it is this shake up that can provide the variation needed to drive evolution. Fewer people realise that DNA can in fact shake itself up ‘EVEN WHILE YOU SLEEP!’. Yes, within an organism’s lifetime. The first hint of this was seen in corn kernels. In the 1940s Barbara McClintock (who eventually got a Nobel prize for her work) noticed that individual corn kernels are often spotted. Something was switching the instruction for pigment on or off as the corn kernel was growing.

A quirk of nature you might think, but Susan Wessler’s group who have spent the last decades following up on this, have found that about 50%, yes half of the human DNA has at one time been these short pieces that have the ability to make multiple copies of themselves and sometime jump around the genome. In some plants the percentage is even higher. They aren’t all dancing at once though, and quite how they are choreographed and what sets the pace is the kind of question that Sue Wessler’s group are getting stuck into.

Now to the wallpaper. For me the fundamental thought I wanted to include was the idea that our genome is riddled with these short, often multiply repeated sections that might allow genes to be a even more versatile than we thought. I’ve used a stripy line to hint at the repeats, and a kind of cog shape to be my analogy for change or driving force. The main square shapes in this design could be seen as stretches of DNA, organelle shapes, cell shapes and/or corn kernels. It is a lovely feature of biological structures that things are often compartmentalised. I have made some light and some dark as a nod to the original pigmentation in corn kernels that were the clue that led to the discovery of transposable elements. I love the idea that the initial observations were right there for all to see, no microscope or DNA sequencing machine needed.

Active or old transposable elements make up half my DNA. This has been one of those exciting discoveries that has happened in my lifetime. The detailed, and often extremely technical work of Wessler and her group is unpicking this world for us. It will change how we think of the biological world and its evolution.

 

Source: ‘The Dynamic Genome’. Susan R. Wessler , University of California Riverside video presentation. Part 1: Introduction to transposable elements and Part 2: How transposable elements amplify throughout genomes without killing their hosts.