Hands down, this review ended up being one of the neatest, most unusual products on the market I didn’t know existed. In a world of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, it doesn’t surprise me that an innovative company has turned your DNA into impressive artwork.

In our house, we all wanted to see our genetic codes, so it was a fight over whose DNA was the lucky showpiece, but we chose Charlotte of course.

The process is fairly simple. You select the product you are making which includes artwork (Digital or canvas printed), myCrystal, or my Genetic ID. You chose the type of product you are looking for, then the background, and the gene of interest.

We chose a myArtwork so we could use Charlotte’s genetic code for a piece of artwork. You can chose which design you would like and they offer a mosaic pattern, Gene world, and life universe.

We chose the Gene World.

Then you pick from a variety of colors you want on the background of your image and we chose pink (duh).

Here is where it gets interesting. You can pick from a hair gene, eye color, mood, taste gene, human pheromone, or circadian rhythm gene. We chose “mood” so anytime Charlotte is doing something naughty, we can tell her that is her naughty gene.

Seemed like life long parenting fun-especially when she is a teen.

Once you have all that selected, you can pick your size of artwork and we chose a digital print so we could have access to print on whatever we wanted. I am seeing a future of some fun Christmas Cards here.

My Gene Image then sent us a DNA kit, which consisted of a sample collector that you rub on the inside of the check of the person being tested. This is where my DH likes to make some fancy jokes about knowing if its his child or not. Hardy, Har, Har, Har.

Then you sent off and voila! Soon enough, your digital print comes back to you.  It arrived in a 7200/5200 photograph, which is clearly large enough that you can print on an entire wall clearly if you want.

This is Charlotte’s Mood Gene Genetic Code:

DNA 101

DNA is the abbreviation of DeoxyriboNucleic Acid). For starters, DNA can be thought of as the building blocks of life. It is made of sugars and phosphate. On each sugar, there is one of four bases attached: A, G, C, or T. Two strands of DNA interweave together by the complimentary bonding force of A and T, G and C to form a helix. The genetic information is encoded in the sequence of these four bases pretty much in the same way as the letters in a book.

As we just mentioned, DNA is like the letters in a book. Well think of genes as the words. Genes are functional regions of DNA sequence that encode proteins that are building blocks for cells. Cells in turn are the most basic components of organs and body. Every part of you, from your fingers to your hair to your metabolism, can be traced down to your genes. This is where MyGeneImage comes in. When you send in your samples, we use special probes to find the gene you are most interested in about yourself. We read the sequence of this gene and display the sequence in an artwork that shows you something meaningful about yourself.

Now I was so curious about this amazing process I asked to speak to the scientist that worked on this project and she was nice enough to give me a call. She explained to me that they basically (and this is my totally unscientific version, so forgive me) have something called a primer that attaches to the DNA that you are specifically looking for (mood, hair, etc) and then multiplies that one gene so they can get a clear picture of it. All DNA is made up of 4 letters, GCAT.

If you ask me, this may be one of the neatest gift ideas or household art projects you could have. There will NEVER be someone with this art in your house because its YOU and its one of a kind. What a cool tribute to a parent, grandparent, child, or pet. They told me their most popular gene purchased is the humane pheromone, which is how attractive the opposite sex finds you.

As personalization hungry as everyone is, this is the ultimate personalization.

Also, My Gene Image has a new product out called myCrystals that lasers in your DNA code along with a picture of the person or image you like and comes in a variety of shapes, into a crystal.

Feeling educated yet?

~Trisha

GIVEAWAY

My Gene Image has offered us a giveaway of either a digital print like we recieved (except you pick gene, color, etc you want) or the small rectangular plaque where your DNA and picture of your choice engraved into it.

All we ask if you head over to My Gene Image and go through the options and tell us which piece of artwork you want!  Click on Order and go through the process of choosing.

Which design, color, and gene you would choose and whose DNA in your family would be the lucky recipient.

To gain extra entries:

• Blog about this amazing company and giveaway -5 additional entries
• tweet- 1 entry per tweet, per day

contest ends 5/31