You’ve already got about 16 billion kilometres of DNA inside you. In case that’s not quite enough, you might like a DNA T Shirt.
DNA makes the colour we see in nature
DNA doesn’t just make us, us. It also makes many of the colours we see in the natural world. Take plants for instance. The genes of each plant direct cells to produce pigments of various colours. These pigments are molecules that selectively absorb or reflect specific wavelengths of light. And the colours we see are the wavelengths they then reflect. Which might attract us, or a bee, to go take a closer look – if our DNA tells us to.
When we first started making clothing, the idea of getting to work with DNA was as improbable and far off as working with kryptonite.
Unlocking the colour codes of DNA
Today we’re on the edge of a small revolution, as two Cambridge scientists named Orr and Jim have figured out how to pick out these genetic sequences that create specific colours in nature, and use them to grow colours from scratch in a lab. Their work comes several billion years after nature figured out how to use DNA to make colour, and 70 years after Francis Crick and James Watson – also at Cambridge – discovered the structure of DNA itself.
Dyed in a giant bath of DNA dye
To genetically engineer the colour blue, we access one of the world’s open-source biomolecular databases, select a protein enzyme found in the cells of the indigo plant, implant its DNA sequence into a self-replicating single bacterial cell, brew that bacteria like beer, then submerge clothing in the DNA soup we’ve brewed up.
