24 Detergents Upside Down

- Peter Mueller

Description of Image:

The work shows three SDS-page electrophoresis gels as used in molecular biology laboratories.  Each gel has eight lanes, and each lane corresponds to the same protein mixture (a mix of several oligomers of bovine seminal ribonuclease), in the presence of a different detergent.  That makes 24 detergents and as these gels are usually examined and looked at in a different orientation – rotated 180º from the one shown – we have 24 Detergents Upside Down.

But this is only the technical part of the title.  The work represents a piece of science taken out of context.  What originated in Alzheimer’s research resembles, when turned around and seen Upside Down, 24 men standing or walking, not unlike in some ancient Native American drawings.  Thus a human side in science is uncovered, one usually well hidden unless you turn everything Upside Down and observe the link between the old and the new; the ancient cultures where nature itself was sacred and the new religion of mankind: science. 

Maybe the 24 men in the picture are dancing; dancing around the fire in a cave or around the flame of enlightenment.  “Let There Be Light” is the motto of UCLA – and it was at UCLA, in David Eisenberg’s laboratory, where the gels that gave rise to 24 Detergents Upside Down originated.

This work demonstrates that we have to look behind things, shake them up a little, turn them Upside Down to gain access to something new.  Unless you look at these three gels “the wrong way” all you see is the result of a failed experiment: 24 times the same mixture of protein molecules stuck in an SDS gel, and none of the detergents changes anything.  But when turned Upside Down, a new world opens itself to the viewer, leading to places where science usually does not go.