Pipettes and pigments

The worlds of scientific inquiry and art examination came together this fall in the new interdisciplinary course "Art and Biomolecular Recognition Laboratory" (MB&B/HSR 218L), jointly offered by the Yale University Art Gallery and the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Students designed and executed original projects in materials science and were introduced to the technical examination of art by analyzing works from the gallery's collections. Armed with biotechnological tools, students found common ground between the chemistry of life and materials used by artists, resulting in new insights in unexpected places, such as within a sea turtle's shell.