With the lightest touch, scientists search da Vinci's art for DNA

Did you know there's a quest to find Leonardo da Vinci's DNA? With no direct descendants, scholars have taken to sampling the famous artist's paintings, letters and even distant cousins. And after more than a decade, there's been a major breakthrough. To find out more about this latest milestone and what scientists are hoping to learn from da Vinci's DNA, we're joined by science correspondent Richard Stone. He has been following this mission from the start and recently wrote the article, "The Real Da Vinci Code" for Science magazine. Welcome.

SUMMERS: Hey. So start by just taking us back to when the Leonardo DNA project started. What was the group hoping to achieve?

STONE: Well, it started in 2014, when the project leader, Jesse Ausubel, at Rockefeller University, wondered whether it might be possible to access the tomb of the person who's considered the smartest person on Earth. So he made inquiries into that and was told that, well, we're not quite ready for you to access this tomb, but if you can make some progress in tracking down some potential DNA that could belong to the master, then we could possibly let you access the tomb.

SUMMERS: Why is it that scholars are so interested in da Vinci's DNA?

STONE: I think it goes to the fact that he was amazingly visual acuity. So he could see, for example, the alternating beat of the wings of a dragonfly. So a dragonfly has two pairs of wings, and to the naked eye, to most people, this appears as a blur. But da Vinci somehow could actually see this wing pattern, and so it's thought that there might be genetic variance tied to perception or creativity.

SUMMERS: We mentioned earlier that there has been a major milestone. Tell us about it.

STONE: So last April, researchers associated with the Da Vinci project sampled DNA from a red chalk drawing called "Holy Child." So the drawing shows the young boy's head, and it was made in the studio 500 years ago, whether it was by Leonardo himself or one of his students, it's not clear. But they were able to recover DNA from this drawing, not just human DNA, but DNA that was able to root the drawing in that time period.

SUMMERS: I'm wondering if you can just briefly describe the process that scientists are using on this project.

STONE: Yeah. So in terms of sampling, they have to be really careful because they don't want to damage the artwork itself. So what they're using is kind of the swabs used during COVID testing. So these long, thin sticks and with the cotton tip, and they very gently rub the surface of the piece of artwork. So this very noninvasive sampling recovers tiny fragments. The big breakthrough recently has been the ability to sequence very fragmented DNA and actually make sense of it.

SUMMERS: Now that the researchers have this evidence, what are their next steps?

STONE: Well, they hope that they might be able to access writings from the master himself - notebooks, letters sealed with wax - which may contain his DNA. And if they're able to recover more DNA, they can compare that to what they found on the "Holy Child" artwork and hopefully find a match.

SUMMERS: We've been speaking with science correspondent Richard Stone. Thank you so much.

STONE: My pleasure, Juana. Thank you. (SOUNDBITE OF POST MALONE SONG, "CHEMICAL")

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