10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17166
application/pdf
2038-3460
17166
1
en
Daniela Papadia
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
The Table of Alliance (Cover’s Comment)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
5
Editorial
2014-07-14
2023-06-12
2014-07-14
2023-07-24
TS
Daniela Papadia
2014/07/14
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17166
2038-3460
1
en
The Table of Alliance (Cover’s Comment)
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17166/16067
5
                                                            Cover’s comment
                               The Table of Alliance

The tapestry (12 metres by 2) is a personal elaboration of the 23 chromosomes
present in the map of the human genome. A detail of each chromosome is seen in
close-up, a ‘zoom’ shot of a particular region of interest (in the order of 100 meg-
abytes) that highlights a particular genetic structure and the sequencing of that
given chromosomic segment enlarged one billion times. A gene with a particular
function and involved in a particular disease has been chosen from each chromo-
some. In the case of chromosome 15, and its segment q25, for example, the high-
lighted gene is believed to be responsible for pulmonary cancer. The genome is a
bond of communion for the human species, showing how every individual is
similar and yet, at the same time, unique. These scientific and cultural premises
are the birth-site of the Table of Alliance project, a performance involving the
realization of a banquet for thirty-six guests seated around a table covered by the
tapestry depicting this personal genomic map. The tapestry was hand-sewn, in the
early months of 2014, by six women of different nationalities, all of them inmates
in the female section of Rome’s Rebibbia prison. A first banquet have been real-
ized in the prison the 12th June 2014. A second banquet will take place over the
following months in the square of Campidoglio, in Rome. Other performances are
planned to take place in other squares around the world. The scientific infor-
mation used to realize the map was taken from e!Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.!
org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Index), which produces a genome data base and makes
the information available free and online. The graphic artist William Greco
helped me in co-designing the tapestry and the geneticist Gianni Soldati contrib-
uted in identifying the genome (locae) highlighted in it. To the latter, I will now
pass the turn.
                                                                     Daniela Papadia

As a scientist I am involved in many different aspects of scientific research but my
main focus is applied research, where the development of clinically useful prod-
ucts is the centre of my work. We look for single nucleotide polymorphisms in-
volved in pathologies. DNA is a very long chain of single small units called nucle-
otides and each one has billions of these nucleotides chained together in a long
spiral molecule called DNA. So, every individual of the human species is similar
because of its DNA. Arms, legs, brain, heart, lungs, kidneys: everyone of us has
one or a couple of these organs constituting the architecture of the human body,
which is exactly written in genes. But if we look a little bit closer to the human
being we start to see small variations, like the eye’s colour, the pigmentation of the
skin, the hair’s colour which are due to variations in the sequence of our DNA.
More than 4 millions of such small single variations are reported in every DNA
molecule of every human being. This indeed represents the source of our biologi-
cal variability. All human beings are similar and different and this paradox is the
central aim of the work of Daniela Papadia. We are all different but still humans,
and for scientists like me this is an extraordinary message to be given in a world
where we easily tend to forget what we are and where we are coming from. In
other words, there is enough scientific evidence to say that uniformity and differ-
ence are not a dichotomy anymore.
                                                                       Gianni Soldati
