Portrait of a DNA Sequence
Artist Roger Berry installs glass wafers that represent base pairs in his sculpture "Portrait of a DNA Sequence."
Art Meets Science
Art and science converge dramatically in the DNA double helix sculpture gracing the central stairs in the Life Sciences Addition. "Portrait of a DNA Sequence" by artist Roger Berry of Clarksburg, Calif., is a fusion of metal and glass that accurately depicts the architecture of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. The work was commissioned by the Division of Biological Sciences as part of the Life Sciences Addition Campaign.
Suspended from the apex of the building's four-story stairwell, the sculpture extends 48 feet in length, yet measures just 18 inches wide, reflecting the long, thread-like nature of DNA molecules. Berry selected stainless steel to represent the two sugar-phosphate backbones of DNA, which twist to create a spiral, or helical, form. He used shapes of colorful dichroic glass, which both transmits and reflects light, to simulate the four nitrogenous bases--adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine.
The structure of DNA can be deceptively simple, yet it is intensely complex." Berry says. "You have to break it down to this kind of silhouette to make any sense of it."
The structure of DNA can be deceptively simple, yet it is intensely complex." Berry says. "You have to break it down to this kind of silhouette to make any sense of it."
Before Berry could start designing the piece, he learned all he could about DNA. Like many biology undergraduates, he began by reading The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, an unconventional textbook coauthored by Mark Wheelis, senior lecturer of microbiology at UC Davis, and syndicated cartoonist Larry Gonick. Berry then met with genetic researchers who described the particular segment of DNA that he would be depicting in the sculpture. The 201-base-pair segment is the genetic code for a portion of a protein called kinesin that was determined by Jonathan Scholey, professor of molecular and cellular biology.
The resulting sculpture is a marvelously complex lattice of silver steel and shimmering color. The backbones contain 400 feet of stainless steel, and the base pairs contain 603 wafers of glass that variously appear as magenta, green, yellow, red, and blue-green. Gazing up or down through multiple layers of bases turns the pattern into a confusion of other hues--deep blue, forest green, and scarlet--"a visual noise," Berry says, much like the jumble of information within DNA that scientists are striving to understand.
The double helix is at the heart of modern molecular biology and symbolizes the common themes that link together research programs in the College of Biological Sciences.