transposons with which she was already familiar with through Pollan's book.  She took the microbiologist's suggestion and incubated the project with a focus on experimenting with visualizing aspects of the tulip genome and other themes from the tulip mania. Through connections with scientists, she found a Dutch biologist from Leiden University who was sequencing the tulip genome and shared his preliminary results with her. He used a relatively new technology called MinIOn, specially developed to sequence long genomes like that of the tulip, which are more than 10 times longer than the human genome. She has used the genetic code in her watercolor collages and created a series illustrating different aspects of a tulip's story; the financial impact during the Tulip Mania in the early seventeenth century in the Netherlands, the tulip's ancestors dating back to Turkey and Central Asia, the ornamental history of the tulip pattern (a popular motif used in Turkish textile and ceramic design and on illuminated manuscripts), pigmentation experiments done during Tulip Mania, the botanical and chemical elements of a tulip and an exploration of historical botanical illustrations, specifically Dutch, seventeenth and eighteenth century examples.