HGNC Haiku Generator

Cutting edge biological science is a field populated with jargon indecipherable to the lay person that requires the near artistic hands of a biologist to paint the image of life. Comparably, Japanese poems known as haikus have for centuries been used to paint scenes of nature.

HGNC Haiku randomly generates haikus using abbreviations of the 24,000+ known human genes from the Human Genome Organization. The abbreviations were compared against a dictionary leaving a list of those closely matching words in English. Then the number of syllables was estimated for each abbreviation. The Perl scripts used are hosted on Sourceforge.net

The generated haiku presented below, entitled Diablo and the Lamb, illustrates the necessity for imagination and knowledge to connect ideas into a cohesive story in any facet of life.