The Boys from Brazil

Helen Polson clasped her hands together, excited, as she took in an exhibit at an art show focused on genetics in New York last week. One in a series of fashion designs based on human embryonic development, it shows a woman, spinal column exposed, draped in a helical red dress of DNA sequencing gel.

"I'm not a scientist," said Ms. Polson, 27, a student at New York University. "But this helps you see, it's not just about the scientific code, it's a new way of looking at the body, it's part of what makes us people." Pausing, she added, "Also, I love fashion."

Since the discovery of the double helix 50 years ago unlocked the molecular secret of life, the popular imagination has been busily sequencing its own meaning from the ultimate scientific symbol. As scientists rush to decipher the way genes express their biological functions, the public's hopes and fears about the power of DNA have found expression in forms both prosaic and profound.

Replicating itself with the efficiency for which it is famous, the double helix has produced a great variety of artistic phenotypes, from the 1978 movie "The Boys From Brazil," about cloning Hitler, to "Clone High," a new MTV animation featuring teenage clones of Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Joan of Arc in modern-day high school. (As nurture would have it, Ms. Arc is an atheist).

Springy bracelets twisted in the shape of a double helix sell for $10 at gift shops across the country; DNA perfume "recommended for casual use," is available at fine department stores, actual nucleic acids not included. Players of the popular video game "Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix" battle bioterrorists; its creators said they were looking for something "more fresh" after the original, which involved retrieving stolen nuclear warheads. The double helix adorned a postage stamp in England. In New York alone, five exhibits devoted to genetics in contemporary art open this month.

With its extraordinary symmetry and blend of form and function, the double helix has supplanted the bomb-tainted atom as the standard symbol of science. Its celebrity status and multiple associations, the art historian Martin Kemp wrote in a recent issue of the journal Nature, make DNA the "Mona Lisa" of modern biology.

But the double helix also resonates beyond science into the public consciousness. Along with the national flag, a Christmas tree or other venerable symbols, the double helix has become a visual shorthand for a range of emotions and beliefs about the nature of life.

"What does it mean that we are surrounded by these double helixes everywhere?" said Soraya de Chadarevian, a historian of science who curated an exhibition of representations of the double helix for the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge. "Even if you don't know what these genes do, it's a simple symbol that stands for much more."

Perhaps not surprisingly, scientists are sometimes dismayed at the shape their prized molecule takes in the realm of culture. For one thing, it is often shown backward, twisting impossibly to the left on magazine covers, newspapers or cartoons.

Dr. Thomas D. Schneider, a molecular information theorist at the National Institutes of Health, created a Web site, the Left-Handed DNA Hall of Fame at www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov /~toms/LeftHanded.DNA.html, in an attempt to stop this particular mutation.

More significantly, some scientists worry that the heavy dose of genetic determinism embodied in many cultural messages about DNA is misguided and will lead the public to a fatalistic view of genetics, rather than embracing it as the future of medicine and a font of knowledge about the past.

Dr. Jan Witkowski, director of the Banbury Center at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has amassed a collection of such material to use as props for his lectures debunking determinism.

One illustration shows a man trapped in a barbed wire double helix. In another, helixes are shown as handcuffs.

A cartoon shows a couple driving in a car, the husband saying to his wife, "I'm genetically determined not to ask for directions."

"I'm sure geneticists think more favorably of genetics and DNA than most of the public does," Dr. Witkowski said. "It's something of a shock to see it associated with handcuffs."

But whether scientists like it or not, cartoons, art exhibits and movies may be the best hope for engaging a broader public in discussion — or even basic education — of their work.

When the 1997 movie "Gattaca" came out, depicting a dystopia where genetic determinism has been taken to an extreme, its Web site forums acted as hosts for debates arguing whether moviegoers would prefer to design their own child or "roll the genetic dice."

"A lot more people were prompted to think about genetics by seeing `Gattaca' than going to the Human Genome Project Web site," said Eugene Thacker, an assistant professor in the literature, communications and culture department at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Culture serves as a public sphere where these anxieties can be worked through."

On the Nitpickers movie fan site, for instance, a question by one nitpicker prompted a long discussion about the science behind the dramatic moment in "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," when a scientist exclaims "He's got DNA!"

"Is my high school biology off," one wants to know, "or doesn't every living creature (alien or not) have DNA in its cell nuclei?"

"I am not sure how many aliens you have examined," came the patient reply, "but one of the unanswered questions about potential extraterrestrial life is how close it matches life on earth."

Another E.T. fan noted that the recent rerelease of the movie has changed the dialogue slightly: we learn that "He doesn't have four nucleotides like we do. He has six."

Salvador Dalí saw himself as the first painter to incorporate the double helix, in his 1963 "Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid." Early work in genetic engineering in the 1970's led to science fiction movies about genetically engineered monsters that included an updated version of the H. G. Wells classic "The Island of Dr. Moreau" in 1977 and found its first true blockbuster in 1993's "Jurassic Park," featuring hungry dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA.

The cultural obsession with O. J. Simpson's trial in 1995 may have done more to raise public awareness of one aspect of DNA's significance, as a genetic fingerprint, than any work of science or fiction. Bijan, the designer of DNA perfume, recalls an increase in sales when DNA tests showed that Mr. Simpson's blood matched that found at the crime scene — not entirely accounted for by an order from Mr. Simpson's lawyer, Robert Shapiro, for 250 bottles for his staff.

In recent years, art has reflected the broader public ambivalence about biotechnology applications of DNA, raising questions about who owns the rights to an individual's genetic identity. "From Code to Commodity: Genetics and Visual Art," which opened last week at the New York Academy of Sciences, showcases Larry Miller's genome copyright certificates, among several other examples.

But some portrayals of the double helix remain openly celebratory. "Blue Man Group," a long-running performance art show in New York and Las Vegas, presents the double helix on a screen as the show opens and twines together tubes spinning from the ceiling into a three-dimensional double helix at the end.

"For us it portrays the ritualistic communion that takes place in the entire room," said Chris Wink, one of the show's creators. "As a kind of icon of something unique emerging that you couldn't predict even if you knew all the parts in advance."

Carolyn Forsman, who has sold almost 250,000 of the DNA bracelets she designed 10 years ago, says part of its popularity is because of the associations it has with the origin of life, how much of your identity is preordained and how much you have control over.