The colorful areas are where two sea urchin species' genetic coding match.

By Richard C. Lewis

The screen of computer science graduate student Ryan Tarpine’s laptop looks like a scene from the movie The Matrix. Columns of brightly colored dots and dashes cascade down the screen, connecting at intervals with bands that run horizontally across the screen.

The horizontal lines represent the genomes of two sea urchin species, their DNA sequences much longer than what can be shown. The colored cascading columns – some narrow, others wider – are places where the genetic coding of the sea urchin species appear to ...