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

DNA

THE DOUBLE HELIX

“We’ve discovered the secret of life.” Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, in local pub, UK, 1953

‘Moreover, the insight that the discovery [of the structure of DNA] provided into how human characteristics arise from our individual genes created a veritable super-highway of research, ushering in gene therapy for inherited diseases and culminating in the recent sequencing of the human genome.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King's College London, UK, 2003
‘DNA is, in every sense, a modern icon. For decades, it has enthralled scientists striving to understand its molecular meaning, provided an aesthetic template for artists, and challenged society with all sorts of ethical conundrums. The defining moment for DNA was the discovery of its structure. Published in the science journal Nature 50 years ago this month, James Watson and Francis Crick described how two strands of DNA embrace to form a double helix, and sparked a scientific revolution. To convince the skeptics that DNA truly was the material of inheritance - the so-called "stuff of life" - it was necessary to show how it could be copied and passed on from one generation to the next. Watson and Crick's model immediately hinted as to how DNA might be copied - each strand of the helix could act as a template to replicate the other.’ Carina Dennis, Nature, from BBC Science, 2003

‘All warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities…and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvement by generation to its posterity, world without end!’ Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life, 1, 1794-6

‘DNA – the most interesting molecule in all nature.’ James Watson, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The only media report of the discovery of DNA, the secret of life – in 1953, the same year as Everest was climbed, and Queen Elizabeth 2nd was crowned - was in one newspaper, the News Chronicle.

WEE DNA STORY - ‘A remarkably short scientific paper, known officially as a letter, was published on 25 April 1953 in Nature, by James Watson and Francis Crick. It was perhaps the most momentous paper of the modern era, proposing a structure for the chemical, DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid), which composes the hereditary material of all living cellular organisms. The proposed structure - a double helix - rapidly became an icon, aesthetically beautiful, and stunning in its capacity to explain how DNA is replicated in order to transmit the genetic material to the next generation…Watson and Crick's paper was published without their undertaking a single experiment. Instead, the experiments underpinning their albeit inspired models were undertaken over the previous three years in the Strand basement laboratories of the Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King's. The prime movers in obtaining the data at King's were Professor Maurice Wilkins, who had commenced pilot studies on the use of X-rays to analyse DNA structure, and Dr Rosalind Franklin, a Fellow who arrived at King's in January 1951, and who advanced the X-ray resolution of DNA structure to a new level of clarity and sophistication. Their data were published alongside the Watson and Crick paper but because neither provided a compelling model for DNA structure, they have often been overlooked. In 1962 Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick but Franklin had tragically died a few years earlier at the age of 37.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King's College London, UK, 2003

‘All living things reproduce; reproduction, or ‘replication’, is one of the distinguishing features of life. The easiest way to reproduce is simply to divide. This is the way DNA replicates itself…The conceptual problems is – or was – that any one body produces many thousands of different proteins, which do hundreds of thousands of different things, but DNA itself seems chemically simple. In fact a DNA molecule has only three basic componenets: a sugar called deoxyribose; a number of phosphorus-containing groups called ‘phosphate radicals’; and a set of four ‘bases’ or ‘nucleotides’ known as adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), and guanine (G). These four bases provide the only source of variation in the DNA molecule. No wonder biologists thought it was boring, and could not possibly be the stuff of genes. How could such simplicity generate such complexity, and with such precision? But, as always, nature is way ahead of us… the order in which the four bases occure in the DNA molecule provides a ‘code’ that is in principle rich enough to specify all the proteins that any living thing could ever require: an infinity of possibilities.’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘This is now the bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh..’ Genesis, 2, The Bible

‘For many years, people who studied genetics thought that DNA wasn't complex enough to contain all of the information needed to make up a genome. DNA acts as the code, but how does it do it?...The function of DNA depends to a large extent on its structure. The discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick is one of the most famous scientific discoveries of all time. The two scientists used evidence collected by other scientists, particularly that of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, to deduce the shape of DNA. One of the most important pieces of evidence came from Franklin's experiments of shining X-rays though the DNA molecule and using photographic film to record where the scattered X-rays fall. The shadows on the film can be used to work out where the dense molecules lie. This technique is known as X-ray crystallography….Working out the arrangement of bases in the DNA helix was made easier by 'Chargaff's rules'…Erwin Chargaff was a Czech-American scientist who had noticed that within every DNA molecule, the number of A bases was always the same as the number of T bases, and that the number of C bases was always the same as the number of G bases.’ YourGenome.org

‘These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew…’ Genesis 2, The Bible

‘..a vital propery of a gene was that it could be copied exactly for generation after generation, with only occasional mistakes. What we were trying to guess was the general nature of this copying mechanism… of course now that we know the answer, it all seems so completely obvious that no-one nowadays remembers just how puzzling the problem seemed then.’ Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, What Mad Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

‘In principle the duplication of DNA is straighforward, yet in execution it is miraculous, although it happens millions of times each second, in each of us.’ Ian Wilmut, scientist

DNA

DNA – or, deoxyribonucleic acid -
a mouthful which should be a poem;

adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine,
which should be the names of angels -

creative bond of adenine with thymine,
cystosine with guanine; A toT, C to G,

which is love,
as chemistry.

Who is this poet who can write the flower,
burning-ember leopard, in just four letters

clustered into threes; spell lily skin
and spotted fur, peacock tail, scale.

1.8 metres of DNA in each of our cells,
sparkling spiral strings, silver threads -

wound into structures less than a tenth
of a millimetre across, leaving plenty

of room on the head of a pin for angels,
invisibly clustering the space of a seed;

reaching to the Sun and back 600 times,
bundled into 23 chromosomes, paired –

three billion letters planted with genes,
nuggets of DNA, in encrypted verses –

chemical factories with magic and dancing
at the heart - realised script called to life -

creating proteins - amino acids -
which are the shared spoken word

of skin and wing - peacock and goat;
expression, mechanism of holy code

which has written itself out of nothing,
the original miracle found among stars.

Writing deducted, life deduced,
from the blindness of existence;

evidence and imagination beyond bone,
molecules of bone, to the dream of bone -

Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin’s
X-ray crystallography, which sounds

like it looks for the heart of rubies -
bone of closed stone, bright skeleton

of a diamond (which might resemble
that of a star, starfish or dandelion) -

shining X-rays through the DNA molecule,
catching the scattered pattern, recording as

a ghosthunter’s camera, authored shadows
on the film, showing the dense molecules -

James Watson and Francis Crick dreaming
the Double Helix, orderly flux; the dancing

spiral, alive with love and creativity -
artist’s shape that is neither life nor

chemistry - idea or dream - but all,
synthesised for imagining, pictured

for understanding, practicality -
as e=mc2 is expression, stripped

poem of energy and mass; so a ladder,
elegant and twisting - with something

of a swan’s neck; backboned poles
of alternating sugar and phosphate

groups – attached bases forming rungs
at each waisted twist, loyal partnering

of bases informed by 'Chargaff's rules’ -
Erwin Chargaff, the Czech-American

who noticed that within every DNA molecule,
the number of A bases was always the same

as the number of T; the number of C bases
was always the same as the number of G -

so Watson and Crick suggested each 'rung'
was composed of a pair of bases, joined by

hydrogen bonds, shackles - A always forming
bonds with T; C always forming bonds with G.

“We’ve discovered the secret of life,” shouted Francis
in the local pub - 1953, when the Moon was still aloof,

blue writing of Earth on the black space page unread -
and the Human Genome lay sparkling like the golden

Pharaoh undisturbed. Pattern and concept, sequence,
mechanism – art and beauty of the Double Helix not

a luxury, lucky add-on, but integral, essential, one,
as everything created by its spiral is a work of art –

creation; kinship residing at the heart of the idea,
making, creating - a holy mechanism, copying –

growing, multiplying; and will become the tiger,
leaf or twitching rabbit in the garden; eagle, fly,

or nomad snail – given four billion years, my child;
gene sequence, spun space, the place of the Word -

deoxyribonucleic acid, etching the words of a poem
with informative light and the blank spaces between -

writing on Earth’s wet page, the work of the blue planet;
sketches and drawings of creation, knitted on spiral pins.

Human Genome (1)

The Human Genome is a book that can read itself - transcribing genes, copying, editing, translating. DNA copied into Messenger RNA…Transfer RNA – genes to acids to proteins. Codes and symbols becoming hair and teeth - skin, wings, kisses. A magical factory of words and chemicals still writing and editing itself after four billion years of Evolution. Letter, word, language, message and dictionary, understood by all living things - bird to man, lizard to man, fish to man. Fly, tiger, owl, worm and Polar Bear. That being heard makes hands and eyes; fur, claw, egg and tongue - reading themselves into existence. It is the book of life. A book that wrote itself. That writes itself; is writing, always. A book where the author is at once the book. In sublime biological creativity, it is the poetry of existence. The art of chemistry. Potential, script and means of organic expression; of life. The calling and creation of materials out of darkness. The Human Genome is a poem.

‘In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.’ Nigel Calder, the Key to the Universe, BBC, 1977

‘Looking back from the present, the genome seems immortal. An unbroken chain of descent links the very first ur-gene with the genes active in your body now – an unbroken chain of perhaps fifty billion copyings over four billion years.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves, the choreographer and the dance that is danced.’ Steven Rose, Lifelines: Biology, Freedom and Determinism, 1997


The Human Genome (1)


The Human Genome is a poem,
conjured syllable by syllable -

from light, water, earth -
such agonising millennia

for the red word of the heart;
rehearsing skin with lilies -

learning body from amoebae,
coagulation of a scripted cell,

through worm and fish,
lizard, bird and shrew –

to the last iris crinkle, hair scale,
spiral print at the tip of a finger -

a billion years to write the eye
from flowers’ pupil-mouths -

star-bone hands from leaf palms -
define pterodactyl wings to fingers;

achingly dyeing first seas, water,
into mysteries of blood and tears.


The Human Genome is Chemistry’s art
and power; life her hooked embroidery,

absolute poem of our communal origin -
creative drive, expression. Symphonious,

honed beyond words; pruned to letter,
sound - profound dessication of being

to what can be -
watered with life.

Boneless poem skeleton;
the stripped poem soul -

shivering like a naked map of stars,
jittery firefly sequence - unprinted.

Brushing the hedgerow
with a casual hazel stick

blanks a million pages
of life’s poetry realised -

each torn Briar Rose, confetti’ed
from her broken hinges, snowing,

took an age and then another age
to write - water dreaming petals.

Each silver fly wing crushed,
such a shattering of miracles;

shining wing glass delicately paned,
smelted from the elements of stars -

polished since original light,
gravity’s peculiar invention -

is a small window in the cathedral
of natural time, telling epic stories;

every geometry of this ruined web
was knitted by the artistry of time -

in sticky script, each silver thread
embroidered by the gifted spider -

this broken grasshopper was Physics’
singing child - her ramshackle rickle

of straw bones were living, brittle
calculations of ascent - parabolic

dramas on chlorophyll fuel; sprung
limb music of her sacrificial wings.


Molecules drafted through millennia,
coagulating endless dreams of water;

Chemistry’s infinite creative palette
sampling light and elements, script -

each hard-brained tight bramble
bouncing greenly, prematurely

to the fruitful morgue of earth,
rots still dreaming purple sugar,

staining blood plumping sweet;
bellyfuls of sun, seed, beak, lip -

bursting into mouth, gut or earth;
handfuls of black-eyed children -

dandelion suns, beheaded as aristocrats,
lion-shorn - still imagine symbiotic air

lifting their lost materials,
on round, star-hair wings.


The shape of the Genome poem
is scattered stars; a twinkling net

of orchestrated switches, illuminating
a man among the bundled prints Life

has already called from the darkness
over four billion years - an unbroken

poem of organic existence; a continuous
music played in flesh, without conductor

or general. Self harmonising, commanding
as the compelling orders of love - weaving

skin on scaffold bones built from water,
like shells, urchins - starfish into hands;

an entire organic future in one cell,
authored by the means of creation.


The sound is the opening of a hand,
that waving white star in the womb

of dreaming blackness; whole volumes
of latent life written at the heart of dark

Universe - spy-writing in invisible ink;
in shades of silver never yet seen in art

or chemistry - if light were liquid,
but not yet lit; or breath of a stone,

dimly blue, promising somehow a heart
from a handful of dust - fabulous intent.


The light of the Genome poem is eyes -
hothouses of soul, plastic organic glass;

her accomplishment that must shine -
whose nature is built of cultured light;

her root the metred heart, red root,
where love waits like a gardener -

rose and plum muscle, metaphorical
metronome; ignition - burning pump.


The writing of the Genome poem
is never done - each time-coiled,

spiralled, scripted cell reads endlessly
the masterwork – responds, reacts -

adapts, expresses, alters or deletes –
restlessly embroidering; elaborating

the art of life in chemistry -
in fresh materials re-drawn

from those first magic molecules
blown from the mouths of stars.


Until Omega, the last letter
in the Genome’s full stop -

crumbling silence of organic death,
twilight shudder of script transition;

understanding the mystery now,
the poem’s unwritten first word,

silent, immaterial syllable
in birthing darkness: Alpha.