PetCODE
by
UNPLUCKED &
Iona Inglesby
A playful take on the notion of 'how much you resemble your pet' from a genetic perspective.
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PetCODE
We all feel a great affinity with our pets. We share our lives, our spaces, our time, and yes, let’s admit it, some of the food they’re not supposed to eat, with them. In many cases, they are a true extent of ourselves, to the point that we might actually seem to morph into one another. But have you ever wondered how much we really have in common? How much of our actual genetic blueprint do we share with them?
The majority of all organisms on our planet share a fundamental code of life, DNA, which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.
The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
We share around 99.9% of our DNA code with everyone else on earth as we all descended from the same group of ‘modern humans’ around 200,000 years ago.
But it is not just humans that have genetic similarity; we share much of our DNA code with other organisms too. This is due to a Universal Common Ancestor from which all organisms now living on Earth have a mutual descent. The Last Universal Common Ancestor [LUCA] is estimated to have lived some 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.
For this reason we share around 96% of our genetic code with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, and 18% with baker’s yeast!
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PetCODE, a collection brought to you by UNPLUCKED and London-based designer Iona Inglesby (https://ionainglesby.co.uk ) explores this question of our shared code in a playful, colourful, and most importantly, scientifically rigorous manner.
We have started with 4 initial human ‘companions’, but who knows where we will end!
About the Artwork - How does the design work
The DNA molecule is found in the nucleus of each cell and is packaged into thread-like structures called chromosomes, the number of which varies from species to species. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs - one set inherited from the mother, and one from the father.
It is possible to visualise which parts of our genetic code humans share with other species by colour coding the 23 human chromosomes, and mapping this colour onto chromosomes of other species where similarities in their DNA sequence occur.
In the fictional example opposite, human chromosome 2, coloured dark grey, contains a section of DNA with sequence ATAGGCATACATA. This same sequence is found on Species ‘x’ chromosome 1. The location of this sequence is coloured dark grey to visualise the region of comparison.
UNPLUCKED MOSAICS
We like to consider Unplucked a collection of stories, boxes that once open transport you closer to one of those natural wonders we share our lives with. In the spirit of those cabinets of curiosities treasured by so many in the past.
All these stories are unique in themselves, and at the same time share a common place and a connecting thread.
To reflect that, UNPLUCKED brings you our own MOSAICS. Like looking through the lens of an observation instrument, before focusing on a particular corner of our world. Encapsulating both our curiosity to discover and our eagerness to collect.
Generated from each one of our collections, but all sharing a deep connection, MOSAICS distill some of the essence of UNPLUCKED.
