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Smithsonian Exhibit Explores Human Genome

Posted on: Friday, 6 June 2003, 06:00 CDT

By CARL HARTMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first exhibit visitors will see at a new Smithsonian show looks like a photo of a giant orange golf ball. The caption says: "This WAS you."

Smaller type identifies the ball as a greatly enlarged human egg cell, the type of cell which eventually develops into a human embryo.

The resulting person, the exhibition explains, consists of trillions of cells. In these cells are copies of the show's theme: "GENOME: The Secret of How Life Works."

The show celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, which carries the genes that determine human traits. It opens to the public Saturday at the Arts and Industries Building and will be on view through Jan. 4 before starting a five-year tour of 15 U.S. cities.

A preview was held Friday for reporters and 30 members of an advance placement class at T. C. Williams High School in nearby Alexandria, Va. The students wore T-shirts that asked: "Do you know that a banana shares 30 percent of your DNA?"

One of the first models on view, 8-by-25 feet, represents a microscopic bit of DNA.

One tiny thread of DNA - 5 million threads could fit in the eye of a needle - could be stretched out to about six feet, says the exhibit. But the genes occupy only 2 percent of that - perhaps an inch-and-a-half. The rest is called "junk" DNA.

"There's so much left to find out," mused 17-year-old Alex Kamorske. "There's 'junk DNA' - it must do something, but we don't know what. There's so much that's new and exciting."

The genome is a genetic map. The exhibit uses oversize displays and interactive activities to explain its complexities.

Visitors to the exhibit can, for instance, track the genes responsible for red hair or dimples or particular hereditary illnesses, said Anne Kinsey, project manager for Clear Channel Exhibitions, which put together the show.

Mother and father each contribute half a person's genes. Chance also plays a role. An interactive exhibit uses a slot machine to illustrate the myriad genetic possibilities. Each time the handle is pulled, the rolling wheels of pictures come up with a new combination.

Other traits that genes control will take years to explore. They often work in combinations and biologists aren't sure how many there are: most think about 20,000, others think the number will turn out to be twice as many or more.

DNA resembles a spiral staircase, a pair of twisted strings holding together "steps" - which are pairs of molecules called bases. The different combinations of the bases on the steps make up the genes.

The strings are coiled in the famous double helix, traced at Britain's Cambridge University in 1953. The discovery is sometimes called the greatest in 20th century biology. Two Britons, Francis H.C. Crick and Maurice H.F. Wilkins, and an American, James D. Watson, shared a Nobel prize for it.

Their work has turned research in new directions. Before it, the exhibit says, biologists had to examine tiny units of life individually, as if a forester were limited to examining tree after tree. Now they have a whole map of the woods.

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