▲ WHAT ARE THESE SHAPES? | A set of 100 unique artworks that explores the genes that guard us from cancer.

Beyond Belief Campaign BRCA Artwork

A one-of-a-kind way of saying thank you

Art is science in love.
— E.F. Weisslitz

In collaboration with the BC Cancer Foundation, I created a set of 100 one-of-a-kind artworks gifted to Board Members and volunteers of the Beyond Belief Campaign in recognition of their efforts and contributions.

The Beyond Belief Campaign was launched in 2022 and has raised nearly $500 million for cancer research.

Our artwork takes a new twist on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. What makes each piece different? Read below to discover.

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▲ BEYOND BELIEF CAMPAIGN BRCA ART | This is a one-of-a-kind print from a set of 100 — it is a fragment of a larger whole. If you put all the prints together, you'd get the full sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins.

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▲ BEYOND BELIEF CAMPAIGN BRCA ART | Fuelled by philanthropy, findings into the workings of BRCA1 and BRCA2 have led to groundbreaking research and lifesaving innovations to care for families facing cancer.

BC Cancer’s mandate covers the full spectrum of cancer care from prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment, to research and education, to supportive and palliative care.

The Beyond Belief Campaign has raised nearly $500 million for cancer research.

source: BC Cancer Foundation

Since 2016, the Familial Pancreatic Cancer Program supported over 1,200 people with pancreatic cancer – 9.5% of those who completed genetic testing had an inherited susceptibility gene that, for some patients, enabled the use of specific types of chemotherapy that are more effective in people with BRCA mutations.

In 2023, a pilot project was launched to offer genetic testing for all breast cancer patients under 60 to identify genetic mutations that increase cancer risk, including the BRCA mutation – so far, two out of thirty patients who underwent testing were identified as carrying mutations and are now being supported by the Hereditary Cancer Program.

In 2024, a first-in-Canada initiative was launched to directly contact relatives of high-risk individuals to pursue genetic testing, including for the BCRA gene mutations. As of mid-2025, 55 at-risk families have been identified as eligible to undergo Parent-of-Origin-Aware genomic analysis.

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BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are so-called tumor suppressor genes, also known as anti-oncogenes. Genes of this type regulate the cell during division and guard against uncontrollable division of cells.

The proteins of both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are normally expressed in the cells of breast and other tissues, where they help repair damaged DNA, or destroy cells if DNA cannot be repaired.

Mutations in these genes create dysfunctional proteins. This puts people at a higher risk of developing breast, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate and other types of cancer.

The fundraising campaign could not happen without tireless support from volunteers. Our aim was to create artwork that could say not only "thank you" but speak to the team work and effort required for scientific advance.

The artwork depicts The discovery and insight gained into the function of these two genes (among others) have led to world leading advancements in care for breast, prostate, ovarian, pancreatic cancer patients at BC Cancer.

Below, I place the artwork in context of the genome and walk you through the elements on it.

For technical details about how the artwork was constructed, see the Methods section.

The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are on chromosomes 17 and 13, respectively. In the figure below, I show all the human chromosomes and call out the positions of these genes.

Relative to the chromosomes, the genes are very tiny. For example, chromosome 17 is about 83,000,000 bases long but the genomic region that corresponds to the BRCA1 gene is only about 81,000 bases — 1/1000th the length of the chromosome.

Relative to other genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 are longer than the median, which is about 24,000 bases.

▲ LOCATION OF BRCA1 AND BRCA2 IN THE GENOME | The human genome comprises 22 autosomal chromosome pairs (chrs 1–22) and a pair of sex chromosomes (XX or XY). The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are on chromosomes 17 and 13, respectively.

If we zoom in on the view above by a factor of 4,000×, the structure of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes is revealed.

Most of the genes are composed of introns, which are regions of the sequence that do not participate in the protein sequence.

A small fraction of the gene region is made up on exons, most of which code for protein, meaning that their genomic sequence encodes the amino acid sequence of the protein. A few of exons are non-coding.

▲ CLOSEUP OF THE BRCA1 AND BRCA2 GENES | The structure of the genes comprises exons and introns. Most of the exons code for protein (very thick lines), but some do not (medium thickness lines). Introns (thin lines) do not code for protein. The BRCA1 gene is transcribed from the – strand. The BRCA2 gene is transcribed from the + strand. The magnification of this view is 4,000× relative to the karyotype view above.

The artwork is based on the genomic regions of BRCA1 and BRCA2, with a focus on protein sequence. However, because most of the genes are introns, I've decided to depict the genes with the introns compressed. This makes more room for the exons — and annotating the art with protein sequence.

With the introns compressed, the relative lengths of the genes is closer to the relative lengths of their proteins. The length of the wild-type BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins is 1,863 and 3,418 amino acids, respectively.

▲ EXPANDED VIEW OF THE BRCA1 AND BRCA2 GENES | Introns are regions of the gene that are removed (spliced) before translation into protein sequence. In this view, introns are compressed by a factor of 20, relative to other elements. This allocates more room on the path to exons, most of which code for protein.

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I've drawn other sequences as paths — such as the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Now that you have a rough sense of the structure and relative length of the genes, let's look at how we might draw their structure in the figure above in a way that is both more interesting to the eye but that also adds another layer of information.

The genes on the artwork are drawn as a path, which is shared by all the 100 artworks. This path is shown below.

▲ THE LINEAR EXPANDED VIEW, SHOWN ABOVE, IS DRAWN HERE AS A CURVING PATH. | The path bends more sharply in regions where there is more repeat content. The compression of non-coding exons (2×) and introns (5×) is slightly different in this view.

The compression factor for non-coding exons and introns is a little different here than in the expanded linear view. There's nothing particularly special about this change of scale — I've selected it to create paths that had an intersting shape and snugly fit onto a square canvas.

You will notice that the path curves in some regions more than in others. This curvature is determined by the entropy of the genomic sequence.

In this context, entropy refers to the level of information (or uncertainty). The path is straighter in regions with low entropy (or information). These are regions of the gene that have more repeat content (e.g. ATATAT). The path is curvier in regions of high information, where there is less repetition in the sequence.

For more information about entropy, see the Methods section.

Now that you know what the backbone of each artwork is, it's time to turn to what makes each of the 100 versions unique.

As I mentioned, the wild-type protein sequences of BRCA1 and BRCA2 are composed of 1,863 and 3,418 amino acids, respectively. Each artwork labels the positions of a subset of these amino acids — about 19 on BRCA1 and 34 on BRCA2.

This set of amino acids is different for each artwork. Moreover, any given amino acid appears in only one artwork. Technically, these sets represent a partitioning of the sequence.

Any one artwork does not tell you the whole story but the entire set does. If you looked at each artwork carefully (you'd have to look at them all), you could work out the protein sequence of the two genes.

In addition, each artwork shows a mutation on each gene. This mutation was selected from ClinVar as being somatic, pathogenic, single nucleotide variant and reviewed by an expert panel.

The mutation is either nonsense (one amino acid is mutated into another) or terminating (the protein is truncated at the position of the mutation). Across the 100 artworks, 100 different BRCA1 and 100 different BRCA2 mutations are shown.

▲ EACH INSTANCE OF THE ARTWORK IS DIFFERENT. | This is piece 3/100. It shows two mutations (one on each gene) in magenta circles. The mutation is described in two ways: how it affects the genomic sequence (e.g. T mutates to a G) and how this, in turn, affects the amino acid sequence. Here, on BRCA1 the mutation is nonsense — one amino acid is altered to another (methionine changed to threonine). On BRCA2 the mutation is terminating, which causes the protein to be truncated. In this case, the base change alters the codon from one that codes for amino acid (leucine) to a terminating codon (identified by Ter or *).

Each artwork comes with an interpretive plaque that describes what is shown and shows the position of the amino acids and mutations along the full length of the protein.

▲ INTERPRETIVE PLAQUE ON THE BACK OF THE ARTWORK | The plaque explains what is shown on the artwork. It also shows a template for the amino acid sequence of each gene's wild-type protein and identifies which amino acids appear on the artwork.