Trio Inheritance

Inherited DNA from each parent, mapped across all 22 human autosomes.

Every person is a genetic mosaic of their two parents. I mapped one individual's twenty-two autosomes, with bands of color marking which stretches of DNA were inherited from each parent. Each band spans a 500 kilobase window; its color encodes the balance between paternal and maternal contributions in that window.

I shuffled the chromosomes and removed the labels, because the pattern itself is the subject. A signature like this would resolve for every person on Earth, similar in form, distinct in detail.

Provenance

Genome in a Bottle (GIAB) benchmark VCFs, Ashkenazi Jewish trio HG002/HG003/HG004 (GRCh38)
https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/genome-bottle
Genome in a Bottle Consortium / National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Reference genome GRCh38 from the Genome Reference Consortium.

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.