CENPA · Meander

The histone that marks the centromere: not a stretch of DNA but a protein flag that tells the cell where to grip each chromosome as it divides.

CENPA is a specialized version of histone H3 that packages the DNA at the centromere, the pinched waist of a chromosome. Where it sits, it lays the foundation for the kinetochore, the platform the spindle latches onto to haul the two copies of a chromosome into separate daughter cells.

What defines a centromere is not its sequence but this mark. CENPA is copied back onto the same spot generation after generation, an epigenetic memory that persists with no unique code beneath it. Lose it, or lay it down in the wrong place, and chromosomes miss their handhold and are lost or torn when the cell splits.

CENPA keeps each chromosome gripped and whole as it divides, so I drew the gene itself, pulling its 444-base coding sequence, the shortest in the series, off the double helix and tracing it as a single meandering line across the sheet. A short gene draws in long, unhurried strokes; on the plotter this piece glides where the long genes thrash, and it is the calmest plot of the seven.

Provenance

The coding sequence of CENPA, transcript ENST00001058870 on the GRCh38 assembly, retrieved from Ensembl (EMBL-EBI).

Materials

Archival giclée print on fine-art paper, a faithful digital reproduction of a pen-plotted work. Each print ships with a signed data-provenance insert card.

Included

• One archival giclée print (unframed)
• Signed data-provenance insert card
• Care instructions

Studio

We are Genetics of Design, a data art studio that uses pen plotting as its medium. Every piece we make begins with a public record, whether road networks, genomes, star catalogs, or species data, which we translate through custom code into composition, density, and line, and publish alongside the provenance of the data it came from.