A friend likes the idea of a personalized "DNA artwork" but has privacy concerns. Any ideas for creating a unique marker artwork ourselves? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/askscience@lemmy.world

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We want to DIY some unique marker inspired artwork. The "DNA art" from companies online involves sending a DNA sample, and we have privacy concerns about that, and we'd rather not fork out thousands of dollars for DNA sequencing devices just for this. We can resort to a fingerprint for inspiration if there's nothing more interesting available and affordable to us, but we'd like to explore our options first.

The DNA sequence artworks they're talking about are ones like this, but it doesn't necessarily have to look anything like these:

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[-] Wren@lemmy.today 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I have some biology under my belt and did a few partner projects with community bio labs.

Are there any community bio labs near you? A PCR/gel electrophoresis shindig is pretty cheap and easy to pull off, and anyone working there would know how to do it. They might even have community workshops for just that.

You're right about privacy too, no matter what a company's policies are now, they could change ownership, go under, or laws can change.

If you're into making this more fun, here's some info on how to do your own PCR for cheap: https://bitesizebio.com/23899/build-your-own-pcr-machine/

There's a link in there for DIY gel electrophoresis, too.

this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025

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