Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory is often interpreted as a depiction of the passage of time and the fleeting nature of being. Inspired by this notion and his artistic style, this piece depicts guanine-quadruplexes (melting clocks all pointing to “G” for guanine) which are structures involved in stabilizing or destabilizing telomeres. Telomeres are structures at the ends of our chromosomes (tree trunk), and telomere length is considered to be a marker of aging (as cells divide, telomeres naturally shorten). Therefore, telomeres, influenced by G-quadruplex dynamics, act as biological clocks for cells, echoing Dali’s exploration of time in his painting.
