The Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life

The Possible Children

2008-07-14T22:21:00.000+01:00

The word of the flower lies in the seed;
ghost of the flower that made the seed -

as you and I carried our recipe for children
all these years, like a smouldering secret -

I felt them, the possible children waiting,
with grandparent ghosts in their skin -

as I have seen them looking sometimes
through their faces, printed in their eyes;

and the children’s babies with years to sleep,
as buds are written at the heart of the flower.

The ear of the Universe

In the beginning is the Word,
which will write - it knows -

language of skin and bone -
shining eye letters, red heart.

Making vehicles of love
with gorgeous chemistry;

embroidering life’s poetry
in the ear of the Universe.

Sky is reading my heart and eyes

2008-07-07T21:58:00.001+01:00

Thudding, low-slung, slate-wool booms,
shuddering my thin, temple shell-bones -

the crumbling Norse-god
is still in senile residence,

drunk on elemental forces,
mashed up, swallowed raw;

lurching randomly - loudly bumping
around dark, cavernous starry domes;

his resurrected sounds bang, hurt
my overblown pressured eyeballs.

Tree-greens are badly transfigured
into exorcised, crude, colour-spirit;

too lurid without leaf body -
silver palm, white sun-blood;

light fingers - like angel claws -
scratch through malevolent blue;

forces wrestling for the troubled soul
of this wrongly-polished summer day.

The laughing river is choked with mercury;
the stern Presbyterian loch sterilised, black.

Sky is reading my heart and eyes -
translating, replicating, mimicking;

suddenly watering the redundant, wormy
rose with enormous, sluggish silver tears -

that burst out intemperately,
like heavenly blood-letting.

In coming to know the Human Genome

2008-07-04T22:30:00.000+01:00

‘Before the discovery of the Genome, we did not know there was a document at the heart of every cell three billion letters long of whose content we knew nothing – now, having read parts of that book we are aware of myriad new mysteries.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

In coming to know the Human Genome

In coming to know the Human Genome,
we move nearer to understanding God -

not further away, as science has wrongly
driven us to conclude hitherto; far nearer

to hearing, reading, knowing the Word -
understanding the organic/spirit concept.

Science has turned the Victorian corner -
elaborating the white formula, Latin map,

it took for the nature, entire, of skeleton
and bone; red corpuscles, valve, muscle,

pumping blood mechanism, mistaken
for the whole heart solved, understood -

recognising now, under unromantic laboratory
striplights, this cold, synthetic gleam it mistook

for its own neutered soul, narrowness miscalculated
as clarity of vision - meanness of its slice scalpelled

from reality, analysed - alienated from context.
Always knowing somewhere this rigid, absolute

model did not fit these imprecise edges of reality -
where the utterly exact, knowable, comprehensible,

immutable, measureable, bleeds in and out
everywhere; is connected to everything else.

Was God Surprised by Us

2008-07-02T22:08:00.000+01:00

Was God Surprised by Us

Was God surprised by us -
still; our hands, eyes, love,

even if He had dreamed
of the Word’s flowering;

of all possible blooms
in His evolving garden.

Was He pleased when we kneeled,
embarrassed, because He believes

in Freedom, Pride, Will - suffering
such unlikely price, gathering woe,

of no direct interference, witnessed
in this premature, burning autumn

of the garden - cultivated Winter
of Creation cultured by mankind.

Reluctantly leaving only amputated
power - dangling spiritual umbilical

cord, invisible,
up to Heaven.

Animal of the Universe

2008-06-30T22:31:00.000+01:00

Animal of the Universe

Tonight a sky of stars is speaking light -
there is something I nearly understand,

coming from original dust, space-home;
as animal of the Universe. Some music

of colossal dancing, also under my skin,
as moving the tree’s ballet dancer arms.

But I can’t quite remember - make out
what they’re saying, singing; not quite.

The Moon’s Word

2008-06-27T22:26:00.001+01:00

‘Th’unwearied Sun from day to day/ Does his Creator’s pow’r display;/ And publishes, to every land,/ The work of an almighty hand.// Soon as the evening shades prevail,/ The Moon takes up the wond’rous tale;/ And nightly to the listening Earth,/ Repeats the story of her birth…’ Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, An Ode

The Moon’s Word

It is the Moon’s word - hung
silver among whispering stars.

Shining white root,
before dust, stone -

the chattering letters of life -
organic noise of water, blood,

flesh and green;
elegies of death.

Wearing her soul -
which is cold light,

as insect and ice
wear exoskeleton;

her own lonely species
of light - honed so cool,

austerely holy, pure; turned
madly bright with loneliness.

A ragged rock bowl
of numb winter sea

hears her silver word,
even in sleeping skin,

mirror ear-sheen;
real as a dream -

twitches, remembering
vibrant sun languages;

the dazzling blindness,
shattering into wet fire -

poaching corpulent autumn suns,
sinking under, orange, overripe -

gutted gold light punctured
slowly over syrupy waves,

turning warm red
as animal blood.

In Nights’s black printing ink,
Moon’s white word is written;

voicing her negative, faux light,
until even a high, queenly tree -

wearing her jewel in keener’s hair -
her sparkling winter starnet tangles,

kneels to her waist in black soil;
and blue Earth holds her breath -

listening, all suspended, resting,
to the fledgling night-angel cry,

born apprentice in Nature’s pantheon;
a startling white owl, silver-dipped -

winged ornament, perfect accessory
in dark schemes of decorating night;

hearing the murdered animal spirits
crawling among moss, fallen leaves;

brittle consonants of glinting black flints -
river’s mercurial skin, her travelling heart

of music; long humming conundrums
of identity - signature impermanence -

smudging milk-blue air with luminosity;
sickly ghosts of her closed honeysuckle –

white brides who have failed with bees;
nunly they hang, offering up sacrifice -

perfume as the last prayer of the flower,
mimicking a signature smell of Heaven.

Her cold white sound,
bloodless command,

has won the season’s night -
overcome both Sun and Earth,

which no longer breathe;
leaving only monuments.

Moon, always the last white light
left on in the sky for child Earth -

last word on Night’s black page;
printing Sun’s lifeless blueprint,

her heartless pressed flower,
as our body makes bearable

God’s light - so transfigured,
we can look upon ourselves.

It is the Moon’s word
hung in black silence.

The word Grace

2008-06-24T22:05:00.000+01:00

The word Grace

In the loveless company of stars,
reading of the Human Genome,
twinkling map of organic existence -

of kinship with the dark leaf
crying silver in my brother palm,
owl hooting his nocturnal love -

stuttering mouse, nervous at nut supper,
rheumatic tree cracking bulging knuckles,
skewering the fat yellow buttermoon -

honeysuckle sugar polluting
the blue ghost of evening;
moths bumping plumply into light -

thinking of the Word
calling all life
from chemicals and love -

everything alive,
from the same trinity of letters,
this simple holy script,

I hunted my language archive -
like a smoker, restless at midnight,
turning out sofas, dusty drawers,

old unworn clothes, dead and stiff;
desperate for just the right thing -
rifling the Contemporary Section,

Popular Idiom, Vernacular;
neat boxes of Metaphor -
shimmering, spilling shelves of Simile -

onward to the Science Department’s
rusty hinges, ignoring the need for ID,
warning signs for trespassers, ignoramuses,

to Chemistry’s mysterious incandscent symbols,
Biology’s volatile Latin -
through History’s shifting, creaking doors -

at last, wandering through Elegy,
the shining halls of Poetry -
built of silver bones and fundamental music -

sparkling dictionaries of Wonder,
luminescent Myth and Legend -
whispering polished figures like gold statues,

until a gas-lit room, mellow, wood-panelled,
smelling of bees and apples -
there a clutch of Old Fashioned Words

like threatened birds’ eggs
in a mahogany, Victorian windowed box;
and there it was, suddenly -

so shining still, no wonder it is holy;
under time-embroidered cobwebs,
silver yet, though dimmed with age -

‘GRACE’.

I cupped the word in both palms,
holding its calm golden light
like a dying September leaf -

dusted it down, tenderly,
polishing the word with my lips,
slotting it home in my heart

like a compatible disk –
shivering, whirring upload
as it was read - exactly, perfectly;

spreading through me like centuries
of matured autumn light, dimly
speckled with sparkling dust-stars,

low humming sounds of bee spirituals -
weary honey workers returning home,
worn, through a rusty gold evening.

Darwing

2008-06-23T22:12:00.001+01:00

‘...Coy Nature….Took sanctuary like Daphne in a tree./ There Daphnes lover stop’t, and thought it much/ The very Leaves of her to touch,/ But Harvey our Apollo, stopt not so,/ Into the Bark, and root he after her did goe:/ No smallest Fibres of a Plant,/ For which the eiebeams Point doth sharpness want,/ His passage after her withstood./ What should she do? through all the moving wood/ Of Lives indow’d with sense she took her flight,/ Harvey persues, and keeps her still in sight./ But as the Deer long-hunted takes a flood,/ She leap’t at last into the winding streams of blood;/ Of mans Meander all the Purple reaches made,/ Till at the heart she stay’d/…Here sure shall I be safe (said she)/ None will be able sure to see/ This my retreat, but only He/ Who made both it and me./ The heart of Man, what Art can e’re reveal?/…but e’re she was aware,/ Harvey was with her there,/ And held this slipperyProteus in a chain,/ Till all her mighty Mysteries she descry’d,/ Which from his wit the attempt before to hide/ Was the first Thing that Nature did in vain.// He the young Practise of New Life did see,/…Before the untaught Heart began to beat/ The tuneful March to vital Heat,/ From all the Souls that living Buildings rear,/ Whether imply’d for Earth, or Sea, or Air,/ Whether it in the Womb or Egg be wrought,/ A strict account to him is hourly brought,/ How the Great Fabrick does proceed,/ What time and what materials it does need/…Thus Harvey sought for Truth in Truth’s own Book/ The Creatures, which by God himself was writ;/ And wisely thought ‘twas fit,/ Not to read Comments only upon it,/ But on th’original it self to look./ Methinks in Arts great circle others stand/ Lock’t up together, Hand in Hand,/ Every one leads as he is led,/ The same bare path they tread,/ A Dance like Fairies a Fantastick round,/ But neither change their motion, nor their ground…’ Abraham Cowley, 1618-67, Ode upon Dr Harvey

‘…I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect’; of this history we possess the last volume alone…Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly changing language, in which history is supposed to be written, being more of less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently abruptly changed forms of life entombed in our consecutive, but widely separated formations.’ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859

‘We are confirming Darwin - it's great to be getting the molecular correlates of what Darwin hypothesised 150 years ago.’ Sir John Sulston, Leader, UK Human Genome Project

Darwing

Darwin of course became an angel
called, fittingly, Darwing - shining

because he wept in the very darkness
he thought he had made - thinking

he had put out this ancient holy light,
proved God Himself out of existence -

invisible in his own scheme;
but searching for God still

like an eye in the darkness
that would not re-open -

knowing he was right -
feeling the unity of life,

but creating physical visions
where the old God of the day,

men had moulded, cast,
could not, would not, fit.

But feeling Him prickle still in the dark,
agnostic before the word was invented -

sensing betrayal and unease of so many,
not least his own wife, for God’s sake -

so, on revelation of the Human Genome,
of course there was a party up in Heaven

at the unexpected marriage
of science and religion -

all these unhappy holy scientists,
James Clerk Maxwell, Einstein -

many others, drunk on vintage nectar,
stuffing grinning faces with ambrosia.

And Darwing swooping, whooping overhead,
dazzling white like an enormous crazy swan.

Nature, sprung improbably

2008-06-19T22:33:00.000+01:00

‘In this one of all fields I know the best/ All day and night, hoarse and melodious, sounded/ a creeping corncrake, coloured like the ground,/ till the cats got him and gave the rough air rest….// -Summer now is diminished, is less by him./ Something that it could say cannot be spoken – As though the language of a subtle folk/ Had lost a word that had no synonym.’ Norman MacCaig, A Voice of Summer

‘To make the natural world safe for physics, Decartes pushed consciousness right out of it into a separate spiritual world, treating each soul or mind as a spiritual substance, made of a stuff alien to other earthly items... But it seems increasingly clear that one extreme view is not more workable than the other. Materialism and idealism are equally the products of dualism.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

Nature, sprung improbably

Nature, sprung improbably
from mystery of the Word,

stardust molecules - light
and water, will burst into

green stars on trees,
human hands, bats;

butterflies, flowers,
wings, flying fish.

But her deeper magic -
written at the beginning,

is maintained, still irreducible;
principle of stark complexity –

RNA the big magic, original
rabbit from a Universal hat -

bridging the holy code
with art and chemistry,

understanding of production;
conducting free range matter,

as only our own mysterious
unproved soul understands -

wiring of Heaven and Earth -
metaphor, story, truth, as one.

Without the Word - nothing

2008-06-14T22:10:00.001+01:00

‘…several classes of facts…seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic beings, with which this world is peopled, have all descended, each with its own class or group, from common parents.’ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859

‘Why we are not like ET - Samples of DNA taken from humans, animals, plants, microbes and viruses have one thing in common: they form a double helix structure held together by four different chemicals called bases. And scientists from New Zealand and Sweden have now built a computer model to show that organisms are unlikely to evolve if their "life code" is written using more or fewer bases. The work could help our understanding of what to expect from alien lifeforms - if we ever come across them. Reading along the double helix, the sequence of the bases can be read off as a genetic code made of four letters - A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine and T for thymine. This code carries the instructions for creating and maintaining life, but why not use two letters, or six or eight? ET in the famous Spielberg film was said to have six-base DNA and, on the face of it, Earth-bound life could have, too. The reason why not turns out to be in the way a prehistoric relative of DNA began to protect itself against copying errors. Paul Gardner, and colleagues…used a computer model to try to explain why four turned out to be the magic number. It is not entirely clear how life first began on Earth, but many biologists believe that before our current DNA-dominated world, there was an environment known as RNA World. RNA is a similar chemical to DNA but it is much less stable and so much less suitable for holding the blueprint information for building complex organisms. Supporters of the RNA World theory believe that RNA evolved from simpler chemicals and only later evolved into DNA. RNA would have existed in a constantly changing and reactive soup. Gardner and his colleagues built a computer model…to examine how RNA might have developed had it had two, six or eight bases, as well as the standard four. They found that four- and six-base RNA molecules were the most efficient at evolving into DNA. But four-base RNAs were the ones which were best suited to overcoming RNA's fundamental weakness: its susceptibility to making errors as it copies itself. The two- and eight-base RNAs seem to get stuck somewhere along the evolution process... But six-base RNAs could have survived if they had evolved a way of putting right the errors introduced by mutation. The research poses the question of what kind of DNA extra-terrestrial life might have if a similar process of evolution had taken place on a similar planet elsewhere in the Universe. "We found the margins between four- and six-letter alphabets to be low, so a percentage of independent lifeforms might incorporate six, or a different four. "But it is likely that the same principles that life on Earth are based on will be used elsewhere," Gardner said. If RNA-based lifeforms on other planets had developed the error-correcting techniques needed to repair the damage to their genetic code caused by mutation and degeneration, they may well have developed into something with six-base DNA. "I'd love to meet an organism with a six-letter alphabet. However, they'd probably take a lot longer to sequence," he said.’ Ivan Noble, BBC News Online, 2003

Without the Word - nothing

Without the Word, nothing
coming among uncultured

stars, under a dusty white Moon -
just stone bones adorning night’s

black charnel-house, silver
graves of collapsing matter.

In the whole Galaxy - Earth
heard, turning blue as an eye,

in the blink of aeons, marshalling
her creatures, her flowers, leaves,

from dreaming amoebae in the heart
of water; hearing the possible poems,

composing them in earth and light
metamorphosed into cells; skeleton,

flesh and wing, all her organic poetry -
laboured from the musical molecules.

‘LUCA’ – Last Universal Common Ancestor

2008-06-13T23:02:00.000+01:00

‘Curiously, although his theory emphasized male-female distinctions, his description in the Origin always placed the primordial ancestor, or ‘the ancient progenitor’ outside, or previous to, gender or sexed system; an ‘it’, never a ‘he’ or ‘she’. Gillian Beer, Introduction to the Origin of Species 1859, Oxford University Press, 1988

‘Back before the dinosaurs, before the first fishes, before the first worms, before the first plants, before the first fungi, before the first bacteria, there was an RNA world - probably somewhere around four billion years ago, soon after the beginning of planet earth’s very existence and when the universe itsef was only 10 billion years old. We do not know what these ribo-organisms looked like. We can only guess at what they did for a living, chemically speaking. We do not what came before them. We can be pretty sure they once existed because of clues to RNA’s role that survive in living organisms today. These ribo-organisms had a big problem. RNA is an unstable susbstance which falls apart within hours. Had these organisms ventured anywhere hot or tried to grow too large they would have faced what geneticists call an error catastrophe – a rapid decay of the message in their genes. One of them invented by trial and error a new and tougher version of RNA called DNA and a system for making RNA copies from it, including a machine we’ll call the proto-ribosome. It had to work fast and it had to be accurate. So it stiched together genetic copies three letters at a time, the better to be fast and accurate. Each threesome came flagged with a tag to make it easier for the proto-ribosome to find, a tag made of amino acid. Much later, those tags themselves became joined togther to make proteins and the three letter word became a form of code for the proteins – the genetic code itself. (Hence, to this day the code consists of three letter words each spelling out a particular one of twenty amino acids as part of a recipe for a protein.) And so was born a more sophisticated creature that stores its genetic recipe in its DNA, made its working machines of protein and used RNA to bridge the gap between them. Her name was LUCA – the Last Universal Common Ancestor.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘Last year has also witnessed the unveiling of the first molecular map of the ribosome, the cell's protein factory. This has given us startling new details about its structure and may boost support for RNA (ribonucleic acid) being the first "living" molecule on Earth.’ BBC Online

‘LUCA’ – Last Universal Common Ancestor

Even before DNA - RNA -
unstable, sucking more life

from the inchoate chemical world -
defining in the blurred creative soup

of transient genes, urging
to be, replicate - just stay.

Becoming ‘organic copier’;
stitcher, cutter and paster -

translator, builder, joiner,
fixer, connector - bridge.

Keeping itself patterned in DNA,
drawing order into possible life -

hearing the Word four billion years ago
in swimming silence, dim interpretation

of the frustrating invisibility of God -
call for creativity as a first principle;

making its own skeleton for us all,
boneless - yet imagined or dreamt.

Ur-gene, first gene; prettily named LUCA,
the ‘Last Universal Common Ancestor’ -

author of the code, writer of the three letter
words holding us in existence; maintaining

our fleshy shell, transforming wet molecules
to scaffold bone; metamorphosing chemistry

that wrote gold barley’s whiskered ear -
heaven-colour of blurred hummingbird,

shining armour of the patent beetle –
owl eye, eagle wing; old melancholy

hunchback sunflower studying earth.
The bridge translating coded stores -

DNA copied into RNA; reading the words,
translating into protein - building limb, fin,

finger, leaf; still reading ourselves,
making ourselves from glued code -

billion upon billion years rehearsing,
but never tiring, becoming dispirited;

like LUCA herself,
who wanted to be -

as earless leaves cramped
unborn within the branch

hear spring and sun.
As space and stars,

heard the Word,
dreamt of Earth.

LUCA not one, but many;
fountain of species, flood,

still printed in our word
with the worm and fish -

tree, bird -
water, star.

RNA

2008-06-12T22:51:00.000+01:00

‘RNA was the Word. RNA left behind five little clues to its priority over both protein and DNA. Even today, the ingredients of DNA are made by modifying the indredients of RNA, not by a more direct route. Also DNA’s letter Ts are made from RNA’s letter Us. Many modern enzymes, though made of protein, rely on small molecules of RNA to make them work. Moreover, RNA, unlike DNA and protein, can copy itself without assistance: give it the right ingredients and it will stitch them together into a message. Wherever you look in the cell, the most primitive and basic functions require the presence of RNA. It is an RNA-dependent enzyme that takes the message, made of RNA, from the gene. It is an RNA-containg machine, the ribosome, that translates that message, and it is a little RNA molecule that fetches and carries the amino acids for the translation of the gene’s message. But above all, RNA - unlike DNA - can act as a catalyst, breaking up and joining other molecules including RNAs themselves. It can cut them up, join the ends together, make some of its own building blocks, and elongate a chain of RNA. It can even operate on itself, cutting out a chunck of text and splicing the free ends together again. The discovery of these remarkable properties of RNA in the early 1980s… transformed our understanding of the origin of life. It now seems probable that the very first gene, the ‘ur-gene’, was a combined replicator-catalyst, a word that consumed the chemicals around it to duplicate itself. It may well have been made of RNA.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘During the dearth and lack of those two thousand/ million years of death, one wishes primarily/ Just to grasp tightly, to compose, to circle,/ To link and fasten skilfully, as one/ Crusty grey bryozoan builds upon another,/ To be anything particular…To become godlike with transformation.’ Pattian Rogers, The Voice of the Precambrian Sea

‘Henceforth, for the animate, to last was to mean to change,/ existing both for one’s own sake, and that of all others,/ forever in jeopardy.’ WH Auden, 1907-1973, Unpredictable but Providential

‘The DNA makes a simpler molecule called RNA which interacts with ribosomes which churn out proteins based on the code in the genome. Some proteins then interact with a structure called the Golgi complex, which inspects packages and labels proteins before handing them over for distribution elsewhere in the cell.’ BBC, 2003

‘It is the classic case of chicken and egg: which came first, DNA or protein? It cannot have been DNA, because DNA is a helpless passive piece of mathematics, which catalyses no chemical reactions. It cannot have been protein, because protein is pure chemistry with no known way of copying itself accurately. It seems impossible either that DNA invented protein or vice versa. This might have remained a baffling and strange condundrum had not the word left a trace of itself faintly drawn on the filament of life. Just as we know now that eggs came long before chickens (the reptilian ancestors of all birds laid eggs), so there is growing evidence that RNA came before proteins. RNA is a chemical substance that links the two worlds of DNA and protein. It is used mainly in the translation of the message from the alphabet of DNA to the alphabet of proteins. But in the way it behaves, it leaves little doubt that it is the ancestor of both. RNA was Greece to DNA’s Rome: Homer to her Virgil.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

RNA

Chemical Word -
spirit of life incarnate

in nascent chemistry -
guddling among Elements;

such light upon the water,
which will knit beams -

muscular feel of current,
into verdant dreams -

into molecular flesh,
swarming real green.

Print of the Word -
enshrined, infinite

while Earth lives.
Still star-sailing

whispering anywhere again -
hot rocks, mountains, water;

something found
out of darkness.

Communication of the Word,
translator of idea into flesh -

organic root; earth-nub;
realisation of the Word.

Active Principle of the Word -
original messenger, Olympian

bearing creativity;
life’s viral fires.

First Art of Chemistry -
first artist of the Word;

understanding desire
to be, to make, create,

for no reason but life,
expression and being.

Breaking - stitching
swarming molecules;

feeling something possible
will come into existence -

cradling one wet cell
dreaming of the flower

when no flower will be
for three billion years.

Why are men afraid to shout
these fabulous Earth miracles,

such shining, unlikely principles -
from mud and light will come us all.

RNA - understanding molecular creativity,
organic artistry, unextinguishable by time -

composer, conductor of chemicals
dreaming in water - such journey

to the white Poles, deserts, mountains,
from her bowl, sea-womb, light-seed -

spectacular travel to wing and eye,
breathing under still water, hooking

possibility from dark atoms of nothing;
connecting with star vibrations - dust.

Learner, teacher, catalysing knowledge;-
the Word driving a fantastic chemistry.

Your Hands are Stars

2008-06-11T22:18:00.002+01:00

‘In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.’ Nigel Calder, the Key to the Universe, BBC, 1977

Your Hands are Stars

Your hands are stars -
bright space molecules

fallen through this Universe
for black billenia. In darkness,

see they shine - learned dust-flesh;
spun white skeleton, light calcified.

Trees are alight with damp green stars,
leaf bones fragile as a mouse’s hand -

are sucking rain, sun,
from Earth’s wet halo.

When you touch me at night -
two silver prints like starfish.

RNA

2008-06-10T22:20:00.003+01:00

GENETIC TRANSCRIPTION & TRANSLATION

‘To continue the linguistic, information-theory metaphor within which genetic theory was now to be formulated, the directed synthesis of RNA on DNA was termed transcription, and the synthesis of protein on the RNA was translation.’ Steven Rose, Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism, 1997

‘TRANSCRIPTION - The cell makes a copy of the gene whose message is to be interpreted. The copy is made of RNA, ribonucleic acid, a chemical similar to DNA. RNA has a different sugar in its sugar-phosphate backbone and is usually a single-stranded molecule. And wherever there is a T in DNA, there will be a U in RNA, also pairing with A. The enzyme that carries out this process of copying is called RNA polymerase. It can recognise the 'start here' and 'stop here' signals that appear in the DNA code, and catalyse the formation of an RNA molecule using bases, sugars and phosphate molecules from the nucleus. The RNA molecule created is called messenger RNA (mRNA) because it is responsible for carrying the message from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, the outer part of the cell, where the code in the mRNA will be translated into protein. The mRNA passes through the pores in the nuclear membrane, and makes its way to the part of the cell where proteins are made, called the rough endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Called 'rough' ER because, under the microscope, it has a bumpy, blobby appearance. The 'blobby' structures are ribosomes - the factories of the cell. Inside each ribosome are three different types of RNA molecule, called ribosomal RNA (rRNA).’ Yourgenome.org

‘TRANSLATION - Ribosomal RNA is responsible for translation, in which the mRNA code is used to create a protein molecule. The mRNA message is 'read' in groups of three bases at a time. Each group of three bases is called a triplet, or 'codon'. There are 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible codons, or combinations of three bases. Most of the codons correspond to a specific building block of protein - an amino acid. Many of the amino acids have more than one triplet coding for them. Because there are more codons (64) than there are amino acids (20), the code is described as 'degenerate'. Three of the possible codons don't actually code for an amino acid; instead they indicate 'stop' signals. One codon (ATG - for methionine) is the 'start' signal for proteins. It is down to another RNA molecule, called transfer RNA (tRNA). Unfolded tRNA is roughly the same shape as a clover leaf. At one end of the 'leaf', are three crucial bases. These bases are called an 'anticodon' and are complementary to one of the codons on the mRNA molecule. When two bases will bind to each other, they are said to be complementary – the base A always binds to T, or (U in RNA) and C always binds to G. For the triplet GUC, the complementary codon would be CAG. These two codons would bind firmly together, with hydrogen bonds forming between each of the complementary bases. Each tRNA molecule becomes attached specifically to one of the 20 amino acids. As the protein is being formed, each codon on the mRNA molecule is read, one at a time. For each codon, the tRNA molecule with the complementary anticodon temporarily binds to the mRNA. The amino acid that is joined to the end of the tRNA molecule is brought in line with the growing polypeptide chain, and the amino acid links to the end of that chain. The tRNA disengages from the mRNA molecule, and the next codon on the mRNA molecule is available to be 'read'. The appropriate tRNA molecule is again joined to the mRNA molecule, and its amino acid joined to the polypeptide chain. The process of making a protein is called translation and is very similar to translating from one language to another - in this case from the four-letter language of DNA (interpreting all the full stops and starts of 'sentences') into the 20-letter language of proteins. ‘ Yourgenome.org

‘Developmental biologists can observe genomic activiation taking place, more or less directly. For example, RNA contains the base known as uracil, whereas DNA contains thymine instead. If you add radioactive-labelled uracil to young embryos in culture you can see at that stage they start to incorporate it. They incorporate the uracil only when they start to make RNA – which, of course, signals the start of transcription.’ Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, Mammals Cloned, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘Let/ there be/ amino acids,/ and there were: a slop/ of molecules in ancient seas,/ building cell walls to keep their/ distance, dividing, replicating, starting, to diversify, one growing oars, one rotors, one/ a wiry tail,/ lumping into clusters…’

RNA

‘Stellar dust has settled./ It is green underwater now in the leaves/ of the yellow crowfoot. Its potentialities/ Are gathered together under pine litter/ As emerging flower of the pink arbutus./ It has gained the power to make itself again/ In the bone-filled egg of osprey and teal.’ Pattian Rogers, The Origin of Order

‘In the beginning was the word. The word was not DNA. That came afterwards, when life was already established, and when it had divided the labour between two separate activities: chemical work and information storage, metabolism and replication. But DNA contains a record of the Word, faithfully transmitted through all subsequent aeons to the astonishing present…On the long arm of chromosome 1… if you read it carefully, there is a sequence of 120 letters - As Cs Gs Ts – that repeats over and over again. Between each repeat there lies a stretch of more random text, but the 120-letter paragraph keeps coming back like a familiar theme tune, in all more than 100 times. This short paragraph is perhaps as close as we can get to an echo of the original Word. This ‘paragraph’ is a small gene, probably the single most active gene in the human body. Its 120 letters are constantly being coped into a short filament of RNA. The copy is known as 5S RNA.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

RNA

The word calling order -
being, instruments of life,

from malleable molecules,
colossal fires of existence;

atomic principles of freedom,
chaos. From spreading stars -

light and water -
green and blood;

simple amoeba heart
coagulating into fish,

a flower coming
to earth and light,

as decorative fulfilment,
wording of early script -

leaves, eyes, animal thud,
heavy on the written Earth;

evolved organic transcripts,
born in the first black belly.

Some Ingenious Gene Words for Growing Body Parts

2008-06-09T22:34:00.000+01:00

Some Ingenious Gene Words for Growing Body Parts:

Eyeless,
branchless,
radical fringe;

serpent,
engrailed,

sonic hedgehog -
pax, gap, even-skipped.

Fushi tarazu,
hunchback,
giant, knirps,

windbeutel,
cactus,
gurken,
tailless.

Porcupine -
Indian hedgehog,
desert hedgehog,
tiggiwinkle,

warthog, groundhog.

Shortarm1a, shortarm1b,
TINYTINYBRAIN.01,
SMALLBRAIN1.
STOMP.

Listen again

2008-06-07T22:42:00.000+01:00

‘It turns out we can shoot the shit all night, stein after Stein, anecdote on anecdote, until the first light swarms over the water like thistledown on fire. Then the fog disappears which is, of course, the day clearing its throat for speech.’ Albert Goldbarth

Listen again

Listen; crippled trees are speaking
to a dishevelled Moon and wind -

green voices in groaning night -
tincture of animal, haunted man,

weird language of werewolves,
nymph-whispering - mermaid,

siren singing - some old dark tongue
we can almost comprehend, process.

We have recognised before, tree language;
leaf, limbs, faces - torsos, wrists, fingers -

known spirit-housing, at dark alone
in foot-muffled wood, among moss,

probable goblins, loss of possible creatures
of light - appealing brotherhood, praying

to good trees, as living repositories of kindness,
patience, for safe passage. Inarticulate murmurs,

understood when we did not know their word;
likewise bird, primate - but deaf to the mouse,

humble worm turning under leaves -
word of them speaking our language,

written in the ancient letters -
holy silence of skin, leaf, fur.

Naturally occurring antisense transcripts

2008-06-05T22:10:00.001+01:00

‘An increasing number of eukaryotic genes are being found to have naturally occurring antisense transcripts. Here we study the extent of antisense transcription in the human genome by analyzing the public databases of expressed sequences using a set of computational tools designed to identify sense-antisense transcriptional units on opposite DNA strands of the same genomic locus. The resulting data set of 2,667 sense-antisense pairs was evaluated by microarrays containing strand-specific oligonucleotide probes derived from the region of overlap. Verification of specific cases by northern blot analysis with strand-specific riboprobes proved transcription from both DNA strands. We conclude that 60% of this data set, or 1,600 predicted sense-antisense transcriptional units, are transcribed from both DNA strands. This indicates that the occurrence of antisense transcription, usually regarded as infrequent, is a very common phenomenon in the human genome. Therefore, antisense modulation of gene expression in human cells may be a common regulatory mechanism.’ Nature, 2003

Naturally occurring antisense transcripts

I can think of several human beings
displaying the effects of anti-sense

modulation in their expressions;
what’s next - the mechanisms

for non-sense - the genes for talking crap?
Might I suggest a few experimental models

among the general population to detect,
and study the Parlo-crapus gene family.

Science and religion are married in the Genome (1)

2008-06-04T22:21:00.003+01:00

‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it…’ John 1, The Bible

‘In the beginning was the Word. The Word proselytised the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever – the Word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to capture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live – the Word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise. The Word eventually blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and become aware of the Word itself.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 2000

‘But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze/ By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags/ Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,/ which image in their bulk both lakes and shores/ And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear/ The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible/ Of that evernal language, which thy God/ Utters, who from eternity doth teach/ Himself in all, and all things in himself./ Great universal teacher! he shall mould/ Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight, 1798

‘In our culture at present, people find it somewhat surprising that an idea can be large enough to have both a scientific and a religious aspect. This is because, during the last century, our ideas of religion, of science, and indeed of life have all become narrowed in a way that makes it difficult to get these topics into the same perspective. (Here our window has become a good deal narrower that it was when Galileo and Newton and Faraday used it. They never doubted these things belonged together).’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, 2003

‘Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. The sources of this feeling, however, spring from the sphere of religion.’ Einstein, Science and Religion, Nature, 1940

‘In the beginning was the word.’ John 1, The Bible

Science and religion are married in the Genome (1)

The Bible: ‘In the beginning was the Word’.
21st Century Science: ‘In the beginning was the word’.

Science and religion are married in the Genome.
Like lovers estranged, enemies, they have hated;

boxers in corners, belligerent generals,
scrapping footsoldiers, irreconcilable -

God hunted from existence by easier truths,
squeezed from vision - unsettlingly inexact,

inhabiting feeling and imagination -
not something you can put on a slide;

prove - though love is the greatest power -
human citadel, force, undying heart flower,

yet cannot be discerned, detected, counted,
by microscope or scan - chemical or sight.

And who had made them enemies but men,
whose minds compartmentalise, reduce -

screens and firewalls of the panicked mind;
even as the heart shouts loudly in the chest,

the soul exerts its own existence, simply -
as presence; burning with their own truths,

contribution to the bigger understanding.
Even this soul man feels inside his skin -

witnessed more clearly in any eye than lens
or cell, stolen, because it has no woven fibre;

white, silken - carbon-dated to the age of God -
when maybe tools to find such energy and light,

bright root of love and consciousness, its power,
may not yet be invented, nor even yet imagined.

As the shifting Genome sparkled still, millennia
in darkness, first root of flesh, and no-one saw -

chemicals and energy; biology, light, life,
have always been the living heart of God,

Who said everything so simply;
He is Word and Life - is Love.

And all our picky labels, selective views and fights,
have never changed a molecule, a string of DNA –

a feather is neither thing of beauty, nor object of cells,
ornament or aerodynamic calculation, but all at once -

that is its glory, whole identity; reduction is not enough
to represent - picture vividly - reality’s brilliant bones -

the whole of Botany has never yet understood a flower
more perfectly than an eye, more completely than a bee.

But love of beauty grows with wonder at such structure;
processes of photosynthesis - chemicals, sugar and light,

that make the flower be, unravelling her millennia of mysteries.
Embryology is art, to be studied, like Michelangelo, enraptured.

We made this battle by ourselves - opposition, dichotomy, war -
excised the heart of science, put a stone where once passion beat;

curtailed God’s nature, meaning of His name and words -
chose ourselves what was, or was not Him, or His domain;

because we did not understand, becoming cleverer -
that big thinking, scope, perspective, grander vision,

still exist when fractured chemistry and medicine,
fabulous astronomy and physics, solve, decipher,

hook some shining elements of knowledge,
so beautifully in symbols, theories, rules -

we are looking at a sliver cut, but a sample from one
vast picture not amenable to such selective thought -

creating partial blindness by a narrow focus - but
feeling confident to name, imprison God in words;

man-made bonds, strictures, boundaries of meaning -
thus allowing men to call the tune, re-make the dance,

that once, we realise, was free; music heard
by Earth and all her jostling creatures, even

to the last green leaf - skin molecule -
converting light, orchestrating atoms;

even if we did not recognise the notes within the tune -
understand from where such strange sound might come.

Ignorance is not bliss:
knowledge is heaven -

to read the illuminated script of a butterfly wing -
burning stripes and coals of tiger and leopard-fur;

unholy, blunt mushroom finger nudging darkness,
natural brass of the golden eagle feather - yellow

light at the sunflower’s black heart,
snow in the slow fur of Polar Bears -

is to see beauty’s shining skeleton, her plastic face -
understanding the means of stunning Earth chemistry.

The Human Genome still shines, her magic retained,
now shivering - exposed in the chill extracting palm

of science; wonder stronger, more intensified,
seeing these words revealed that are the poem

of us, of all that live upon the Earth, or ever have;
or will, in the branching future of organic family -

Time’s hair’s-breadth splitting between water
and earth - worm, fish, mammal, flower, man.

Truth is essential to God and Science;
God and what science studies are one.

Truth is not singular vision;
will not be encompassed -

simplified, stripped of its bigger,
closer, messier, blurred meaning -

and of all ironies, science is so far the greatest proof,
if proof be ever possible – desirable - that God exists.

We are the Word

2008-06-02T22:44:00.001+01:00

‘Heredity is a modifiable stored programme; metabolism a universal machine. The recipe that links them is a code, an abstract message that can be embodied in a chemical, physical or even immaterial form. Its secret is that it can cause itself to be replicated. Anything that can use the resources of the world to get copies of itself made is alive; the most likely form for such a things to take is a digital message – a number, a script or a word.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

We are the Word -

We are the Word -
poems called forth

from the mouth and hand
of black-masked nothing;

as stars shining somewhere -
existing invisibly behind light.

We are poems spoken

We are composed poems spoken
by the opening mouth of life -

the Alpha of star roots as mysterious
as imagined silence of stellar Omega.

Like illuminated manuscripts

2008-06-01T21:58:00.001+01:00

Like illuminated manuscripts

Words fill us,
create, are us -

like illuminated manuscripts,
written brilliantly in time -

our detail and colour,
elaborately painted -

ornate with organic life;
gilded with some light

of different material,
decoration of spirals;

so few pages ever open -
displayed under eye-glass.

*
God is a writer -
life the printer.

I am a story telling myself

2008-05-31T22:25:00.001+01:00

‘Believe it or not, the Harry Potter stories aren't the only highly anticipated series being published these days. On page 865 of this issue, you can find the third instalment in another such series - the book of human genes. This book is being produced by thousands of people around the globe.’ Nature, 2001

I am a story telling myself

I am a story telling myself.
Chapters of hand and eye,

to last syllables of hair -
reading, speaking aloud,

expressing chemicals
as iris flower, laughter

lines printing my ancient,
re-born face; figured thus

from the very start of things -
the elaborate wording of stars

blown from the mouth of God;
His ideas lurking in blackness.

*

We are books,
still opening -

being read -
and writing.

Books for others
to open, crease

and read -
understand.

Life is a script forever reading

2008-05-30T22:44:00.002+01:00

‘It is these chromosomes… that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state.’ Erwin Schrodinger, Physicist, 1943

‘The key image… is that of a species’ genes as a detailed description of the collection of environments in which its ancestors lived…The genes of a species can be thought of as a description of ancestral worlds, a ‘Genetic Book of the Dead.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’ Ecclesiastes, The Bible

‘The genetic code was cracked in the 1960s, when Marshall Nirenberg, Har Khorana, and Severo Ochoa figured out that three letters of DNA encodes a particular amino acid. A three-letter word made of four possible letters could have more than enough permutations to encode the 20 amino acids.’ BBC Science

‘But Darwin had invented a new concept, and ‘everyone’ did not know how to read it, as metaphor or as force.’ Gillian Beer, Introduction to the Origin of Species, 1859, Oxford University Press, 1988

‘The genome that we decipher in this generation is but a snapshot of an ever-changing document. There is no definitive edition.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

Life is a script forever reading

Life is a script -
forever reading,

being read;
adapting -

revising, growing,
shifting, changing.

New lines and chapters
recited in each eye, hair,

complex interaction amid
Time’s enormous pages -

light sampled, as blood
identity, original energy,

life’s brilliant fuel
for any conversion -

sound of a heart,
sound of a wave,

written on Earth’s
stil evolving score.

One brush with a flower,
weary bumping bee fatly

transporting showered pollen
to the passing human sleeve -

altering the unseen masterwork;
sight of one unexpected bloom

might cause a man to declare his love
for a waiting woman - make children,

delete some murderous lines
in the dark chapter of a head.

Our script so linked and curlicued,
we are at dance with everything -

spoken and unspoken,
in the earthly theatre -

original arena -
restless with art;

every syllable mattering,
always work-in-progress.

I am words in unformed dark

2008-05-29T22:37:00.003+01:00

‘Although the inherited vocabulary is simple its message is very long. Each cell in the body contains about six feet of DNA…if all the DNA in all the cells in a single human being were stretched out, it would stretch to the moon and back eight thousand times. There is now a scheme, the Human Genome Project, to read the whole of these three thousand million letters and to publish what may be the most boring book ever written.’ Steve Jones, The Language of the Genes, HarperCollins, 1993

‘When the Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, decoding the ‘book of life’ was a controversial and far-off goal. But now, with the announcement on 26 June that 90 per cent of the human genome - the ‘working draft’ - is in the public databases, the main chapters of the book have been deciphered. Not a bedtime read maybe, but the first draft of the human genome sequence gives researchers access to the most invaluable medical reference book. For the next three years, the Human Genome Project will tackle an even more challenging task - filling in the missing paragraphs and rigorously checking the spelling and grammar to produce the final ‘gold standard’ sequence.’ Wellcome Trust, UK

I am words in unformed dark

I am words in unformed dark,
my letter-flesh as yet unborn -

but my last fingernail half-moon
already brittle; bright white fossil

scratching behind clouds of time,
like a cat at the right closed door.

‘The Word became flesh…’ John 1, The Bible

The Word is the answer

The Word is the answer;
bridge, conductor, key -

between nothing
and life; invisible,

without molecule,
known dimension -

singular concept
now blossoming,

pre-rigged with being -
mysterious with matter.

Light even in darkness
glueing random atoms -

clustering the world
with chemical love.

We hear the page of the world opening

We hear the page of the world
opening at our time to print -

as seeds hear spring,
light in the darkness;

fumbling earth,
water touching.

Now is the time of growth -
our own organic expression;

being a flower among flowers -
the illumination of being alive.

I am written in the hand of God

2008-05-28T21:39:00.001+01:00

‘The human genome is a book - reading it carefully from beginning to end taking due account of anomlies like imprinting, a skilful technician could make a complete human body.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘We've now got to the point in human history where for the first time we are going to hold in our hands the set of instructions to make a human being. That is an incredible philosophical step forward, and will change, I think, the way we think of ourselves.’ Dr John Sulston, Head, UK Human Genome Project; Director, Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre, UK

I am written in the hand of God

I am written in the hand of God,
the one language of all Creation;

as everything that lives is written;
over and over – in sand, charcoal,

copperplate, type; sketches sharpening
from blurred script - watery, indistinct,

to the intricate and exquisitely precise;
particular, high definition digital print

looming from the masterwork
as recognisable kind, species -

the organic poem of you or me,
maybe once a leaf - fern spore.

The Literary Trinity

2008-05-28T08:58:00.001+01:00

‘[DNA] had first been isolated from the pus-soaked bandages of wounded soldiers…by a Swiss doctor named Friedrich Miescher. Miescher himself guessed that DNA might convey the hereditary messages ‘just as the words and concepts of all languages can find expression in 24-30 letters of the alphabet.’ But DNA had few fans; it was known to be a comparatively monotonous substance: how could it convey a message in just four varieties.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

“Each of the 30,000-100,000 genes is like a verse of the bible.” UK Scientist

The Literary Trinity

The Literary Trinity -
three letters forever

spelling life’s simple words;
from the magical incantation

of eyes - called from the workings
of light, yet coded under darkness;

psalm of the hand sung
as bone-star, blood-leaf.

Rhyming egg-shelled wing with sky,
dreaming man, feather mechanism -

all Earth’s products and volumes;
holy script writing sea into blood,

light into green, blue into water,
water into fish - tree, bird, man;

infinite literature of chemistry -
improbable art of the Universe.

*

I am written in the same three-letter
words as everything else alive –

my family inhabits Earth;
in their skin, fur - green.

*

The Word speaks
in the darkness -

poems come -
alchemising life

from love, letters -
intelligent chemicals.