A gene is a long sequence of string with 4 letters, A, T, C and G. The “encryption” was figured out long time ago. Every 3 bases code for one amino acid. But, what if we look at genes from a computer graphic programmer’s point of view?
I wrote a program in Processing to “decrypt” genes in my way. I read 12 bases and convert it to a RGB color. The images are the result of such interpretation. It’s a E.Coli genome (a bacteria easily found from our backside). It’s very similar to a random noise image. However, what caught my eyes are the darker bands close to the bottom of the image. Does it mean anything?
Further study will be carried out. I’ll verify whether the dark bands correspond to any biological features. Are those areas more packed with coding genes or non-coding genes?
Another thing I would like to do is to write a program to search for a better “decryption” look up table, to see if that will yield better results. Interestingly, these kind of programming method is normally call “genetic algorithm”.
Image generated based on E.Coli Genome
Image generated with random noise
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