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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 3 weeks 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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[-] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

not entirely sure what your question is ... why not just ... make art that looks like this? What's the "science" part of the question?

You could always submit DNA from a pet or something that wouldn't be a privacy issue, but I think it's smart not to ever give your DNA to a for-profit company (and to be careful when giving it to medical companies, etc.).

For what it's worth, gel electrophoresis was something I did in high-school, you could probably buy RNA or DNA samples online and setup your own electrophoresis, but then I'm not sure what you would want to do with the result - but it would look a lot like the photos you're sharing in terms of showing the DNA fragments suspended in the gel 🤷‍♀️

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago

gel electrophoresis

Thank you, this is the kind of answer we're looking for :)

why not just … make art that looks like this?

The value of this kind of art, to them, is that it represents something real and personal.

You could always submit DNA from a pet or something that wouldn’t be a privacy issue

Good idea!

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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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