Tuesday 6 May 2008

DNA Trails

‘Aristotle said the the ‘concept’ of a chicken is implicit in an egg, or that an acorn was literally ‘informed’ by the plan of an oak tree. When Aristotle’s dim perception of information theory, buried under generations of chemistry and physics, re-emerged amid the discoveries of modern genetics, Max Delbruck joked the Greek sage should be given a posthumous Nobel prize for the discovery of DNA.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford Canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air…The whole performance, cotton wool, catkins, tree and all, is in aid of one thing and one thing only, the spreading of DNA around the countryside…Not just any DNA, but DNA whose coded charcters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. Those fluffy specks are, literally, spreading instructions for making themselves…It is raining instructions out there; it’s raining programs; it’s raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn’t be any plainer if it were raining floppy disks. It is plain and it is true, but it hasn’t long been understood.’ Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986


DNA Trails

Sunlight sparkles my own galaxy -
bustling imprinted dust halo; orbiting,

oscillating skin, nail, hair and blood.
Snakely coiled in each shedding cell,

miles of shining instruction;
silver strings, dewed web -

for all of me - my future;
my means and materials,

personal evolved chemistry,
written, knowing everything -

each particle of this dust could re-build me,
like a life raft, escape pod, flying earth, sky;

sent back into space without a compass -
each shed molecule a miracle overlooked.


And I think of my lifetime trail of dust DNA,
abroad on untold journeys through the world -

every day called ordinary, moulting secrets
of my being; into streets, homes, mountains,

restaurants - seas, rivers, supermarkets, moors;
my very essence shed like wild dandelion seed,

affecting Earth, possibility, the march of things
in ways we cannot know, or guess, comprehend,

though could be known, gifted omniscience;
winds spreading my germ even among stars,

wandering the lifeless moons, volatile, hostile
planets; cold galaxies looking for a new home.


And what reading do we do; inhaling,
breathing other people’s DNA, deep

in historic twin nose, lung, ancient brain,
heart - deciphering in three nanoseconds

four billion years of a slightly amended
story. On this difference does our liking

hinge, smaller than the angel-crowded
heads of pins, invisible to naked eyes -

dislike, repulsion, hatred; or just some yuk,
unease, discomfort, hanging round a man -

as dark halo - printed DNA we read as spiritual
and physical cloud - even as prickling darkness,

threat - black and yellow mental stripes -
danger, like poisonous frog, wasp, snake.

Or silver script; the grown immortal lines,
good poetry of a fine person - golden bee

clouds humming round their head, in air;
their winged cells, physical seed, shines.

Speed-reading; instinct and art, practise -
unconsciously judging products of Earth

for friendship, pity, tenderness, interest,
laughter; occasionally, love, advantage,

chemical compatability - chromosomal
dance-partnering, genetic story-binding -

instantaneous synthesised flash illuminating,
praying our own dust be so favourably read.

‘There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over. There is enough storage capacity in the DNA of a single lily seed or a single salamander sperm to store the Encylopaedia Britannica 60 times over. Some species of the unjustly called ‘primitive amoebas’ have as much information in their DNA as 1,000 Encyclopaedia Britannicas.’ Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Longman Scientific and Technical, 1986

In the strange illuminations of night, I saw
one of my particles dance from the room –

silver now, courtesy of Moon; Vasco da Gama,
Columbus cell, willing further, onward to mild

summer darkness, blurred milky-blue -
shining small star of me, word of me,

my own holy recipe contained, encrypted -
me in potentia; chemical dream, possibility.

I blew, flustering, sparkling my script;
when light floundered behind a cloud,

still it shone, its light not wholly physical,
of course, having my nature; how natural,

innate, understanding of these properties,
aspects, combinations - metaphorical and

scientific, symbolic, mystical and chemical;
our complex ease with mental and physical

existence, smooth interpretations, translation.
To what destination, my germ – possibilities;

canned knowledge of four billion years
of Evolution; what fragile hope resides -

seed-star, cell-pod, dust-root, fruit-speck;
yet there went the lily, tiger, flower, too –

O Generous Genome ark, enveloped letter;
in her latent wings, she folds all creatures

written since the first love of Chemistry
embraced two cells, began writing hearts

and eyes; her recipes all wonderful,
brutal in their deathly celebration -

she will coax life even from a stone -
nowhere may escape the breath of life,

operational even under water, on rock;
at extreme temperature, height, depth -

sail forth, small Ship of Man, journey -
to what end and place, story, her cargo;

to the near eye bright as foxy Venus -
with more life than the whole galaxy

in pregnant tenth-of-a-millimetre cells.
Organic promise; bottle, vessel, poem -

maybe she makes for poor dry Moon,
feverish planets - beautiful toxin, life-

germ; reaching a finger to her journey,
like snow, I shed more - always more,

more cells, by head-scratch, hand-rub,
undressing, sex; all these Me-galaxies,

carelessly strewn everywhere I’ve been,
all these places I have not, but am now -

most melting back to dust, as crushed atoms,
identity minced as glass-smeared molecules

of miraculous fly; to organic mess, devastation;
to be recycled - already I may be a green leaf -

the eye of an eagle, star-whisker of a mouse.
Each new use of life is the workings of light,

all possible bodies my scripted dust might build,
each one shines - as monument, love-reflection,

life-shrine, mother-organism - the fantastic result
of ongoing experimentation, creative composition.

DNA cannot help but be a poem; her nature is
a poem - her creatures, the reading in the dark.


‘Perhaps the last thing to say about the double helix is that fifty years of ubiquity has almost institutionalised the idea in popular culture that the double helix as design is new. It isn't. Scientists reveal the truths inherent in nature. So just as DNA itself wasn't 'discovered' - it's always been there - the double helix as a design construct has been around a long time. It was employed in the grand staircase of Chambord (begun 1519) designed (probably) by Leonardo da Vinci for François I. Leonardo's employment of the double helix was done for purposes of secrecy: those ascending one helix would never see those descending the parallel helix. More than 400 years before the discovery of DNA's structure, Leonardo's push-me-pull-you staircase - a design with inherent tension - mirrored the oppositional pull of DNA's parallel sugar spines. Charles and Ray Eames understood that good design should be based on a democracy of distribution. Beauty coupled with affordability. And their spirit of democracy mirrors that of the public human genome project that aims to make DNA an open source code. In nature as well as in man-made design, good designs succeed and poor designs eventually die off. So happy birthday DNA, and long live good DNA design.’ Denna Jones, Curator, TwoTen Gallery and Contemporary Initiatives, Wellcome Trust, 2003

‘The fundamantal laws of nature are part of the basic furniture of the world, and physical theories are telling us that this basic furniture is remarkably simple. If a theory of consciousness also involves fundamental principles, then we should expect the same.’ David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, 1995

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