Genetics

This latest picture in my ongoing series of medical drawings is all about Genetics: Two pea vines (courtesy of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who deciphered the rules of genetic inheritance by carefully observing these plants in his garden) entwined in a double helix, with pods in the role of nucleotide base pairs. The order of base pair alignment (A=T, C=G) is spelled out in the CAT TAG, while birds, bees, and a Crick-et named Watson look on. That's a jean-etic marker stuck down in the ground, with X and Y symbols, and a FISH (Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization, a fancy way of identifying genes in the laboratory) close by. The dice dangling above represent the random association of inherited traits. Oh, the little guy? He's Gene, the gnome.