Lichen Fungus (Lichina pygmaea)

Gene density across the seven chromosomes of a lichen-forming fungus.

Lichina pygmaea is a lichen-forming fungus with a compact genome of seven chromosomes. I drew its gene density, the number of protein-coding genes in each region of each chromosome, and of the three organisms in this series it is the tidy one: genes spaced relatively evenly along every chromosome, a simple, efficient arrangement.

It is the smallest genome in a three-piece series I made comparing how three very different organisms, a mouse, an oak, and a lichen-forming fungus, arrange their genes.

Provenance

Ensembl, Lichina pygmaea (assembly glLicPygm2.1, GCA_963422465.1)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCA_963422465.1/
Ensembl (EMBL-EBI). Reference assembly glLicPygm2.1 from the Wellcome Sanger Institute / Darwin Tree of Life Project.

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.