Saturday, January 9, 2010

Singapore 2004 World Stamp Championship - GSK & DNA Microarray

The World Stamp Championship was held in Singapore in 2004, and for each year in 2002, 2003 and 2004, Singapore Post issued 5 miniature sheets, each with 2 stamps and a label carrying a different corporate advertisement. For 2004, one of advertisers was GSK or Glaxo-Smith-Kline, a big pharmaceutical corporation; and its advertisement shows a gloved hand holding a DNA microarray with a typical image of DNA microarray result as the background. Now a DNA microarray consists of microspots of single stranded polymeric DNA molecules attached to a glass slide, and can be used to analyze the expression levels of the corresponding genes of a test subject.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Germany 2007 Scientific Council 50th Anniversary

This stamp was issued on 20 September 2007 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the German Scientific Council. The lower portions of the stamp features various images representing the different branches of science, but I couldn't make out what they are, except for the first 2 from the left. The first looks like a block of DNA sequences, while the second is obviously a block of binary series. A friend actually pointed out this stamp to me, asking me if there is any "scientific" error in the first image - more specifically the second row of DNA sequence: "TGACDATC". Can you guess what the error is?