Gem Deoxyribonucleic Acid

Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or rather more commonly known as DNA forms today’s math-art. This was created by Paul Thiessen, of ChemicalGraphics, who wrote an amazing program called PovChem.

How I actually stumbled upon Paul’s site is a story on its own. After reading this article about DNA and knots, I started looking for pictures of knotted DNA, but I couldn’t find any high resolution pictures. And so I stumbled around looking for pictures of DNA, and I found Paul’s site.

This image struck me as interesting because instead of the usual usage of balls and sticks, he uses irregular geometry to represent the TACG sequence. This to me is more of an artistic representation of a DNA than a scientific model. And he has taken some artistic liberties, which obviously I enjoy. This is the very building block of life (well, not entirely, I still think amino acids are the basics), and someone took the time to create an artistic model of it. Why not savor it?

I like the way how Paul made the background a blur instead of the typical black background. This way, the gem DNA stands out, and displays itself as a main object of interest.

Okay, so where’s the math? DNA is full of mathematics, mate. And here’s a bit of a teaser for you conspiracy fans. A full cycle helix of a DNA measures 34 angstrom in length, and 21 angstrom in width. What’s the ratio? 1.619, a.k.a phi. Cue dramatic music.

And follow me this: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 x y. Fill in x and y. Cue more dramatic music.

There are obviously more mathematical references in DNA than I care to list (actually, I do, but I’m a little busy today) - think spirals, recursion, etc.