For every dollar invested in the Human Genome Project, $141 was returned to the US economy (Image: Donald E. Hurlbert and James di Loreto/Smithsonian)

Even crucial science doesn’t necessarily translate into an exciting exhibition, to judge by Genome: Unlocking life’s code, an exhibition in Washington DC

: Unlocking life’s code, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, until 1 September 2014, then across North America

WHITE, filamentous and twisted into a 25-millimetre-long glass test tube, the dehydrated DNA is not much to look at. Yet it unites humans, animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms, making them what they are.

The humble jar sits in a corner of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. It is part of a new exhibition called Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code, dedicated to efforts to understand the code in those frail strings.

The timing could hardly be more perfect, according to Eric Green, director of the , and 10 years since the completion of the (HGP).

But building an engaging show around something that is crucial and yet fundamentally unexciting to look at is a brave and problematic endeavour. The 7 million people who flock annually to the most visited natural history museum on Earth are savvy folk, expecting surprise and sophistication. Even a mannequin imprinted with glowing As, Cs, Ts and Gs – representing the four nucleic acid bases that make up DNA – pales in comparison to a giant squid on another floor.

That said, the organisers try hard to compensate for the visual shortcomings of their subject, offering lessons in how the human genome relates to our health, medicine and ethics, and how the genomes of humans and other creatures compare.

The taxpayer-funded HGP was controversial from its inception in 1990. żěè¶ĚĘÓƵs promised that mapping the 3.2 billion base pairs that comprise the human genome would help doctors cure disease. Yet people worried about eugenics and designer babies – or that the project would fail to deliver at all.

It is only now that the HGP’s leaders can brag about its successes. At the exhibition’s opening last month, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and leader of the HGP, said that for invested in the project, $141 was returned to the US economy. He added that we now know the genetic basis for around .

“For every dollar invested in the Human Genome Project, $141 was returned to the US economy”

The public can judge whether it was worth the money by watching a series of videos documenting life-changing improvements. For example, one shows a pair of twins and their parents explaining how the twins seemed to have cerebral palsy, until genetic sequencing revealed they had dopa-responsive dystonia, a rare, treatable condition.

Visitors can also use a touchscreen to explore what might happen if a family with a massively overweight baby opts to have the child’s genes sequenced. The test reveals a rare, unnamed genetic condition that can only be treated with a tailored diet. If the parents don’t opt for the test, the baby will gain weight even on a drastic, sugar-free diet.

With all this potential, the public may want to understand how the human genome actually works. But here the explanations flounder. The genome is presented as a stack of papers with As, Cs, Ts and Gs printed out across them. Below, a drawing shows that a full printout of all the 3.2 billion letters in the genome would approach the height of the Washington Monument – about 169 metres.

And elsewhere, biodiversity is depicted using pillars of sand, with each grain representing a letter of the genetic code. An amoeba’s pillar, for example, reaches close to the ceiling, with 670 billion letters, while a far shorter pillar next to it illustrates humanity’s 3.2 billion letters. But with no obvious explanation of why size doesn’t correlate with complexity, visitors will probably come away mystified.

Taxpayers have a right to hear about research they fund. But in an age of multiple media, curators and outreach specialists ought to worry more about the fit between subject and format. In the case of the genome, might they have done better to make a film, or use virtual or augmented reality to make their points?

Either way, the exhibition’s schedule affords plenty of time for changes.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Why DNA is a tough sell”

Yamanaka Chairs by Phil Ross at The Workshop Residence, San Francisco

I’M INTERVIEWING Phil Ross on mushrooms. The fungal chair he’s sitting on slopes ergonomically under his back; the underside of mine is shaped by the wheelbarrow in which it grew. The chairs differ in the details too, with small antler-shaped fungi blossoming out of the white, grey and brown-speckled surfaces at seemingly random spots.

Ross, an artist, inventor and self-taught mycologist, says he “just allows these monstrosities to emerge”. He is modest. These organic beauties are the product of years of experimentation which began with controlling the light available to sprouting fungi and mushroomed into full-scale chemical tinkering.

To design the furniture, Ross says, “you think about space in terms of the cellular arrangements of fungus, and about its relationship with gases and other physical qualities in the material around it”.

Ross builds on tips from mycologists, industrial designers and farmers, but his technique primarily derives from thoughtful testing. “It’s all about precision, measurement and repeatability,” Ross says. “It’s good to be a little sloppy, as long as you take measurements so that you can repeat a positive outcome.”

For instance, an unwanted green mould once invaded one of Ross’s fungal sculptures. In desperation, he mixed kerosene with Vaseline to create what he hoped was an anti-fungal preparation and dabbed it onto the spots of mould. Instead, his fungus sprouted antler-shaped fruiting bodies.

With tools such as the serendipitous kerosene-Vaseline mix, Ross determines where a mushroom blossoms, where fuzz forms, and where the main substance of his pieces, the body of the fungus, or soma, hardens.

Currently, his chosen fungus is Ganoderma lucidum (commonly called reishi or lingzhi), which has been hailed for its healing powers in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 2000 years. It feeds on various woods, but the fungal furniture on display during his residency at The Workshop Residence gallery once feasted upon red oak sawdust. As it digests the wood, it rearranges the fibres and forms a hard substance called chitin, also found in crab shells. The arrangement of the sawdust and the size of its chunks alter the chitinous forms that result.

All this engineering means that Ross’s chairs, footstools and tables are incredibly tough. They are strong enough to blunt a saw, and can stand a fair bit of fire or water before they start to degrade. Fungal furniture easily outlasts IKEA’s flat-pack wares, Ross says.

Ross dismisses the notion that his furniture is a dangerous addition to anyone’s living room. Once a fungus reaches a shape of his liking, he kills it by cooking it in a 67 °C oven, before coating it with a biodegradable lacquer. That means the finished furniture contains no live fungus and spores to spread it no longer form.

“To have a general fear of fungus is like having a general fear of animals or technology,” Ross says. “There are zillions of fungi, so to vilify them all because of a couple of flesh-eating kinds – well, that’s just not fair.”