Chromosome Studies


'Benjamin Fry Benjamin Fry

chromosome studies is a series of studies in information visualization, using the human genome as subject matter. These large printed works begin with very simplistic, two-dimensional representations and move towards extremely dense, multi-dimensional forms.

First in the series is a poster of what was believed to be the shortest human chromosome (number 22, made up of around 50 million letters). The simplest possible representation is used, namely all of its millions of letters in sequence. The result is an enormous print that is approximately three meters square, even at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch in a 3-point font (75 letters per inch).

A medium-complexity example is chromosome 14, represented by sets of isometric boxes for the hundreds of genes on the chromosome, along their descriptions. These boxes proportional to the number of letters for that code for the gene relative to its adjacent and intermingled letters.

With a single poster for each of the chromosomes, these pieces become progressively more sophisticated, with the most compact representation being used for chromosome one, the longest of the human chromosomes.

This work is called Genomic Cartography and it seeks to create visual and interactive representations of raw genomic information, analogous to how a cartographer might chart a large land mass in an attempt to communicate its topology and to enable further discovery.

http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/chromosomes