Genetic DNA Markers Create an Intricate Chessboard

The infinite beauty of the chessboard of creation. It's old but true - a picture is worth a thousand words! Too bad the doctor who put this together used only 62 individual's sequences, not 64! Story from The New York Times.

In the Art of a DNA Graph, the Colors of Uniqueness
By BINA VENKATARAMAN
Published: June 17, 2008

“DNA Collage 1” is on the cover of the new issue of Connecticut Medicine. Dr. Ruaño called it a “snapshot” of variations in the genome sequences of 62 people, one to a column, from blood samples taken in clinical studies at the hospital.

Tiny rectangles, making up what appears more a grid than a collage, are each a “fingerprint’’ showing how a person’s DNA sequence varies and what makes the person unique — or not. Differences in the sequences could affect, for example, how likely a person is to have heart problems or suffer side effects from a cholesterol drug.

All people have in common more than 99 percent of our gene sequences. Yet the type of sequence variation portrayed here, caused by a single altered nucleotide, accounts for most of the genetic differences among humans.

The colors show the DNA type inherited from a father, mother or both parents. Red signals a “genetic mosaic” of the parents, with different sequence variants from each. Black and white rectangles show that a person inherited the same sequence variant from both parents.

“We wanted to synthesize variability into a clear pattern,” said Dr. Ruaño, who is president of Genomas Inc., which is developing genomics-based tools for diagnosis and drug prescription. “The eye is the most important pattern recognition instrument that humans have.”