http://us.cnn.com/2013/09/04/tech/innovation/dna-face-sculptures/index.html(CNN) -- We leave genetic traces of ourselves wherever we go -- in a strand of hair left on the subway or in saliva on the side of a glass at a cafe.
So you may want to think twice the next time you spit out your gum or drop a cigarette butt in public.
New York artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg might pick it up, extract the DNA and create a 3-D face that could look like you. Her project, "Stranger Visions," fashions portrait sculptures from bits of genetic material collected in public places.
"The idea for the project came from this fascination with a single hair," Dewey-Hagborg told CNN. "This turned into a research project for me exploring exactly what I could discover about someone from an artifact they left behind."
As it turns out, she could discover a whole lot.
Her process starts with finding a sample in a public place -- a strand of hair, a cigarette butt or a chewed piece of gum -- anything that might contain cells from a person's body.
"You want something that is relatively fresh," she said. "Nothing that has been stepped on or that looks like it's been sitting around for ages."
Dewey-Hagborg takes the sample to a community biotechnology lab in Brooklyn called Genspace. There she uses a standard DNA extraction protocol to mine the DNA, purify it and use it in polymerase chain reactions. The technical process is outlined on her blog.
"From a cigarette butt, I can learn where someone's ancestors likely came from, their gender, eye color, hair color, complexion, freckles, their tendency to be overweight and a handful of dimensions of the face as well with a certain likelihood," she said.
Once she obtains the sequencing information, she takes the traits she's gathered from the individual's DNA and feeds it into a computer program to generate a 3-D model of a face.
