Old Skool Visualization

While doing a literature search on sequence visualization I came across this paper from 1986 by JE Cowin et al. which describes a "new method of representing DNA sequences which combines ease of visual analysis with machine readability".

My computer science background means that unfortunately I tend to treat papers over, say, ten years old rather skeptically (I mean, they're obsolete, aren't they? Basic discoveries are allowed as exceptions). This one, though, has an old skool charm about it.

It's based on the idea that instead of a sequence of letters DNA could be represented as points on staves (like the horizontal lines you see on sheet music). The top line is G, the one below it A, the next T and the bottom one C. In theory this makes the sequence both machine readable by light pen and more amenable to analysis by eye. Also it means you can play your favourite gene on the trombone at parties and get all the girls.

I'm not sure I'd want to look for complex binding motifs or anything by eye but it does let you see purine / pyrimidine tracts, GC rich regions and that sort of thing fairly easily. The paper also notes that in the case of palindromes "the symbols form a pattern of perfect dyad rotational symetry about an axis perpendicular to the centre line of the stave". Uh huh. I'm actually interested to know what the thing about the light pen is: do the authors mean machine readable from a piece of paper, or the screen, or what? Sadly I lack the necessary technochronological context.

Anyway, the program - in a language that I'm not familiar with but which looks a bit like some sort of more complicated BASIC (feel free to identify it if you can) - was included as an appendix and published along with the paper. Not quite a compendium, but still.