THE RIDDLE OF LIFE >

AN EXHIBITION OF ARTWORKS BASED ON A PARTICULAR DNA
MOLECULE AND A BRIEF EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Joe Davis

IN COLLABORATION WITH

Al Wunderlich, Dana Boyd, Michael
Shia, Sarah Zehr, Rob Stupay
Curtis Lockshin, Elena Guipponi
Nathan Heminway, Jude Robinson
Shuguang Zhang and Zak Sherzad

16 October-10 November 1995

Ticknor Lounge/Boylston Hall and
an installation in Old Harvard Yard

(Entrance to Old Harvard Yard at Massachusetts Ave.)

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Reception Friday 27 October 5-7 PM

FEATURING AN ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCE BY

BAD ART ENSEMBLE

HOURS: Mon.-Thurs. 9AM - 9:30PM; Fri. 9AM - 5PM
PHONE: (617) 495-8048

In the Fall of 1958, Max Delbriick, the great physicist tumed biologist, sent
a mysterious telegram to George W. Beadle at the Nobel prize ceremonies in
Stockholm, Beadle received the prize for medicine and physiology in that
year. Delbrick had composed his telegram in a form that reflected some of
what were then very new and exiting ideas about the nature of DNA and the
operation of the genetic code. It was also an important precedent for the idea
that extrabiological information - in this case, English language - could be
contained in genetic form. The telegram was sent as one continuous ‘word’
with 229 letters:
 

— vo wes pee °
.
bi
Ts Rae 7 ee

 

 

 

AVE ALB BDBADACDUBBAGLCECDACLBBIABBAADCACA
BDAPDBBBAAC AACBBBA BDCCDBCCBBDBBBA ADBADA
ADCUDCBBADDUACAADSBUSDD ARB ACT AACRCDBABA
BDBBBADDABDBBDA BDBACBADBBDBACBBDCBB ABD
CACABB ACDA ACADDBBDBBBADDBADAX BBADDBA
DAACBCDCACABBABCABCBBDBACBDDACDBDDCBDC

The key to unraveling the message was that it mimicked the triplet operation
of DNA. In Stockholm, George Beadle managed to crack Delbriick's code and
read the English sentence:

BREAK-THIS-CODE-OR-GIVE-BACK-NOBEL -PRIZE-1 EDERBERG-GO-HOME-

 

MAX-MARKO-STERLING.

The next day, Beadle replied with a slightly different triplet code of his own.
Beadle sent his telegram to Delbritck's laboratory at Caltech in Pasadena,
California. When Delbriick and his colleagues deciphered Beadle's code they
found the return message:

GWBTOMDIMSUREITSAFINEMESSAGEIFICOULDDOTHEFINALSTEP

The historic ‘biocommunications’ between Stockholm and Pasadena were still
not quite complete. Evidently, Delbrack and the group at Caltech weren't
ready to let the recent Nobel laureate have the last word. They rallied with
yet another mysterious message.

At a formal lecture after the Nobel prize ceremonies in Stockholm, Beadle
was presented with a molecular model constructed from toothpicks
(Delbrack had airmailed it to the presiding officer). Each central ‘rung’ of the
ladder-like model was represented by a toothpick stained with one of four
colors. Like the coded telegrams, the toothpick mode! contained an English
language message, but with a code made up of colors rather than letters.

This time, Delbriick chose to encode a particularly poetic message. It
embodied a theme that is important to the history of both the sciences and
the arts, and a classical philosophical dilemma. The message sent to Beadle
in toothpick form echoed the mythological Riddle of the Sphinx in which
human beings unwittingly hold the solution to the most difficult problems
(which of course, they have created for themselves).

Both Delbrick and Beadle had ingenious ideas for exprassing human language
in the form of DNA, but in 1958 no synthetic, or artificially constructed
nucleic acids were available. A project to create the DNA corresponding to
Max Delbriick’'s toothpick molecule was undertaken by Joe Davis, the
Laboratory of Molecular Structure at MIT (Alexander Rich Laboratory), and
the Burghardt Wittig Laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Biology and
Biochemistry at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. The molecule that
was first conceived nearly 40 years ago, actually came into existence in
January, 1994. The current exhibition is based entirely on the forms and
unique operations of this molecule, Max Delbriick's RIDDLE OF LIFE.

mvalonf by HG aoa ae ‘Leder phone!

NOVEL Stig

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