Crafty Science Ho!

The intersection of craftiness and science is always a joy to behold. And Beverly St. Clair’s Genome Quilts are no exception. In the same way that your genetic information is encoded in your genome, she has come up with a way of encoding it in a quilt.

She has taken each of the four base pairs, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine and matched each of them up with the orientation of a triangle in a square to match their initial. Like this:

There’s a lengthier explanation on her website here.

So, for example, if you add up all the base pairs of the Hepatits C virus genome, string them along in rows as if they were a text, and quilt them, the object below is what you get:

She has also quilted the human red cone pigment gene and the WIG-1 gene. Neat-o.

If you’ve got a favorite gene in mind that you want to snuggle up to in bed note that St. Clair also takes commissions. Prices range from $1000-$5000. 

In fact, if you commission a quilt of some section of your very own genome - like you can at National Geographic’s “Genographic project” - and turn it into a heirloom object as its passed down the inheritance might on two counts: the genes might very well get passed down along with the bedding.