The da Vinci DNA Project

While it’s been in place for a little over a decade, I’ve just learned about the da Vinci Project to find Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA (mind you, it’s also been 3 years since I took World Civ and I also relearned the difference between Leonardo da Vinci versus Leonardo DiCaprio).

Leonardo da Vinci has no known ancestors, and so mapping out his DNA is not nearly as simple as it would be for anyone else. Researchers around the world are collaborating to piece together his DNA through his old possessions and living relatives.

Understanding da Vinci’s DNA would be advantageous in understanding what allowed him to be such a genius. Thus, scientists would be able to determine if certain genotypes result in certain phenotypes (and in his case, particularly intelligent phenotypes).

What else these findings will be used for, I am not sure. And I am not an expert in genetics or genetic engineering. However, genetic modifications come with a moral debate. As technology continues to advance, people will be faced with the challenge of drawing the ethical line of where genetic engineering can and cannot be used. 

I recently watched and wrote an essay about the movie Gattaca in my Spanish class (dubbed over in Spanish, of course). It depicts a society in which one’s social status was predetermined by one’s DNA. In order to ensure that their children had optimal genetics, parents who could afford it would genetically modify their children prior to birth. Thus, society was divided between “valids” and “in-valids”. The movie follows Vincent, an in-valid “faith-birth”, in his quest to get to space. In order to even be considered, he took on the identity of Jerome Morrow: a genetically perfect man who injured himself and is paralyzed from the waist down.

Genetic modifications are a wishy-washy subject. On the one hand, having the ability to manipulate genes may allow people to reduce the risk of developing a critical disease, life-threatening mutation, or defect. On the other hand, however, genetic modifications could be irresponsibly used, harm the genetic biodiversity of society, loss of individualism, and as demonstrated in Gattaca, create an impossible standard of perfection and foster a class divide with very limited mobility.

So, while I support the investigation of da Vinci’s DNA for scientific purposes, I hope that the findings should not go beyond curiosity. If these findings eventually open up a new field of genetic modifications in humans as they did in Gattaca, I hope that the world would be wise enough to place regulations for it to be used responsibly and safely.