Are Our Genes Really Our Fate? DNA’s Visual Culture and the Construction of Genetic Truth

The direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andme has recently been described by journalist Erika Check Hayden as a “unicorn.”¹ For Hayden, this Silicon Valley idiom describes the company’s one billion dollar valuation while also capturing the rare opportunity it affords to scientists: its two million customers make up the largest available pool of gene-linked health data.² The home testing kit’s packaging does little to disrupt visual continuities with popular imaginings of unicorns: a matte, velvety white box has been striped along one edge with rainbow chromosomal pairs, their neat, parallel lines forming a multihued mane.