You Can Now Purchase Scarves with Your DNA Pattern

If you want the most personalised gift in the world, a scarf having a design based on your own DNA sequence shall do the trick.

Dot One – a London-based company – stated that each individual shares 99.9 percent of their DNA with other humans on Earth, but that 0.1 percent is what makes us unique.

The company, which was named after the 0.1 percent genome that distinguishes people from one another, manufactures scarves and prints, as well as other DNA-personalised items to celebrate our uniqueness.

To collect DNA samples, Dot One asks customers to swab their cheeks. Then, the swab is sent to AlphaBiolabs, the leading DNA testing service in the United Kingdom. The sample is analysed using a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which creates a lot of DNA copies.

Iona Inglesby, founder of Dot One, said that some people are still fearful of DNA testing, even though it is no longer such a rare thing. At-home DNA tests are usually not part of one’s retail experience. However that is not the case for Dot One.

During the lab investigations, scientists look for short tandem repeats (STRs), which are DNA variations that are usually two to five nucleotides long and that repeat themselves a number of times.

According to the company, the fingerprint of about 23 STRs in several chromosomes is enough to differentiate an individual form any other person on Earth.

At the time Inglesby came up with this innovative idea, she was a design student at the Royal College of Art in London. Because she wanted to create something that would be meaningful to people, she started looking into coding weaving patterns using genetics as a code.

The whole process of manufacturing the scarves is extremely interesting, especially when siblings (or any other family members) decide to undergo DNA testing, according to Inglesby. It is nice to see similarities between siblings or between parents and children when it comes to the genetic code. The end result always turns out to be a surprise, since the pattern on the scarf is determined by an individual’s genetics.

One scarf retails at £310 which is equivalent to about $460, and a prints costs £139 or approximately $205. For those interested in buying one of these personalised scarves the company also ships internationally.

Image Source: thenextweb