{"id":2117,"date":"2007-05-03T07:46:35","date_gmt":"2007-05-03T07:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/05\/the-yellow-and-red-blue-and-green-brick-road.html"},"modified":"2007-05-03T07:46:35","modified_gmt":"2007-05-03T07:46:35","slug":"the_yellow_and_red_blue_and_gr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/05\/the_yellow_and_red_blue_and_gr.html","title":{"rendered":"The yellow (and red, blue and green) brick road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My fellow Cambridge-London commuters; did you work it out? Once you know that it depicts a gene, it\u2019s annoyingly obvious. But despite travelling past it by train about three days per week, I failed to identify the thousands of brightly coloured bars painted on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk\/transport\/around\/cycling\/shelford_addenbrookes_cycle_path.htm\">cycle path<\/a> next to the rail track near Cambridge\u2019s Addenbrooke\u2019s hospital as a nucleotide sequence. It should have been a clue that only four colours are used.<\/p>\n<p>It probably comes from generally not being very biochemistry minded, as a straight-physics editor. Nevertheless, a friend of mine mentioned he had heard about the biology-inspired cycle path artwork and after some quick Googling, the rumour was confirmed; the colourful sequence <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/BRCA2#Discovery_of_BRCA2\">stands for the BRCA2 gene<\/a>, implicated in breast cancer and discovered in 1995.<\/p>\n<p>What a good idea to combine scientific topics with railway scenery. After five years of commuting I would welcome more of these puzzles along the rail track to keep me entertained!<\/p>\n<p>Liesbeth<\/p>\n<p>Liesbeth Venema (Senior Editor, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/index.html\">Nature<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My fellow Cambridge-London commuters; did you work it out? Once you know that it depicts a gene, it\u2019s annoyingly obvious. But despite travelling past it by train about three days per week, I failed to identify the thousands of brightly coloured bars painted on the cycle path next to the rail track near Cambridge\u2019s Addenbrooke\u2019s hospital as a nucleotide sequence. It should have been a clue that only four colours are used.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/05\/the_yellow_and_red_blue_and_gr.html#wpn-more-2117\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/05\/the_yellow_and_red_blue_and_gr.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}