The second strand

I've been reading anything at all vaguely connected with Isabella's story, so I was browsing the biography section in the library last week. 'Fathers and Sons', Richard Madeley - It was the blurb that begged me to examine the book. It claimed to be the story of the effects on subsequent generations of a traumatic event that took place in 1907. Ok, Isabella was a woman, but what's the difference in this context? Straight onto my pile it went.

In some ways I only needed to read the Preface where I came across this:

‘........ Fathers and sons, four generations strung together like beads on a twisting double helix of shared DNA. Utterly unalike when regarded from some angles; almost clone-like in their similarities when viewed from others.  

Climbers roped together through space and time, mostly barely conscious of distance twitches on the line, but sometimes pulled up sharp by a sudden unmistakeable tug from the past.’

I was hooked....off to Google. Was this just one author's imaginative idea? No. There were articles in scientific journals as well as Wikipedia. 

For example here: The beads and string of DNA | HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

'Envision DNA as a very long string, wrapped around millions of beads made of proteins. To regulate genes, cells use thousands of different proteins. 

Imagine the beads are made of thousands of combinations of different colors and designs.'

Electron micrographs show how the idea was born:

I'm well and truly hooked. I wanted a second strand to Isabella's string of beads, and now I've got it.