IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016 - 12

For the Stranger Visions project, Dewey-Hagborg collected cigarette butts, hair, and
chewing gum from public spaces.

"Even if it wasn't the government
observing us, then certainly companies
were, and they were turning it into
profit for themselves," Dewey-Hagborg
says. But no one, she realized, was
talking about genetic surveillance-
the body, the bread-crumb trail we
leave behind.
She began to imagine the person
who had left the hair and noticed the
detritus that we all walk by every day,
small personal items discarded by people, the potential assault on our privacy.
Dewey-Hagborg wanted to find a way to
make that vulnerability visible in an art
project. From DNA analysis of collected forensic samples, she was interested
in creating realistic three-dimensional
(3-D) portraits. Was this even possible?
And if it was possible, what were the
broader implications of doing so? That is
how Stranger Visions was born.

I n 2 0 0 9, m ole c u l a r biolo g i s t
Ellen Jorgensen and her partners
had opened a community biotech lab
called Genspace. Genspace is part of
the do-it-yourself (DIY) bio movement,
which aims to make biotechnology
open to everyone under the concept
that with diversity comes innovation. In Jorgensen's 2012 TED talk
("Biohacking-You Can Do It Too")
she likened her vision for personal
biotech to the personal computer.

DIY Biotech
Dewey-Hagborg knew she wanted to
turn her eye to the world of bioart, but
the tools seemed out of reach. If biotechnology was generally inaccessible to the
masses, she was fortunate to be in an
area where that was changing-Brooklyn, New York.

12

IEEE women in engineering magazine

Dewey-Hagborg blended science,
technology, and art to create realistic
3-D facial sculptures based on the DNA
of the forensic samples.

June 2016	

There was a time, she reminded the
audience, when people wondered why
the would need a computer.
Dewey-Hagborg enrolled in Genspace's Biohacker Crash Course. Among
other things, students would learn how
to extract DNA and then how to amplify
that DNA, essentially making enough
copies-hundreds of thousands-to
make it usable. Just as Jorgensen had
envisioned, the class turned out to be
made up of all sorts of people; there were
artists, journalists, amateurs and hobbyists, teachers, scientists, musicians,
industry types, most with very little
background in technology.
She started the course wondering if
this project in her head could be accomplished, and it only took one class to
realize that it might be, at least to some
extent. She spoke with Jorgensen, then
pitched her idea before the board, and
soon she was working in the lab under
the board's mentorship.

Snips
Dewey-Hagborg gathered samples-
cigarettes, hair, chewing gum-from
the streets of Brooklyn and set out to
determine how their owners may have
looked. Coming up with a genetic profile deals with identifying "snips" on the
DNA-well, SNPs. Single-nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs) are, in essence,
copying errors, which also means that
they are what distinguishes us genetically
from everyone else on the planet.
When a cell divides to make two
new cells, it makes copies of its DNA
to pass along. But what if a mistake is
made when copying, much like a typo?
These typos change the recipe, and may,
depending on where they occur on the
strand, influence not just appearance
but possibly health (or nothing at all).
The new cell has a particular set of SNPs
in it, and those become part of you.
When you create new life, you pass some
of those SNPs along in your DNA.
Dewey-Hagborg had to find a method to identify the SNPs that would clue
her in to her subject's physical characteristics. For a few hundred dollars you
can send a saliva sample to an online
personal genetics and profiling service



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016

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