Multiple Sequence Alignment

Yeah, I thought it would be nice to make another science-inspired fractal.

Sorry for rambling a bit here, but...

A multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a procedure in which you take several potential genes (i.e., inherited traits), and you see if they have certain similarities (called "conserved domains") that would make them the same type of gene. Each potential gene is represented by a sequence of letters, and each conserved domain is a part of that sequence of letters representing a certain chemical.

Now, a gene is part of a DNA "message" in the nucleus of a cell, and then your cellular machinery uses that DNA message to create an RNA message, which is taken out of the nucleus. Another part of your cellular machinery then makes a protein that performs a certain function; this protein is the final functioning form of the gene.
So the letters in the DNA sequence are A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine and T for thymine. These are the chemicals that are in a DNA message.
In an RNA message, it's the same as DNA except you have U for uracil instead of T.
In the final protein form of a gene, there are 21 letters in the sequence, each representing the different amino acids that proteins are made of.

So basically, a multiple sequence alignment determines whether certain bits of DNA or protein have a certain portion that contains similar chemicals in the same order, and therefore whether those bits do the same thing.

-End of rambling-

In this fractal, the different letters are represented by certain colors.

Made in Apophysis 7X