What colour(s) is DNA and related things like genes and plant cells?

I am very much a layman in scientific matters, but am perplexed at the many different images of DNA I have seen in which the double helix never looks the same. Is there a uniform shape and colour within human and other animal bodies? When you Google Image DNA each image is always coloured differently, and the same is true for microscopic images of genes, viruses, pathogens and so on. Are these things essentially colourless and the images we see artists' impressions, or are they coloured in specific ways in order to highlight specific things? This is also true with things like xylem and phloem, which in every book and image I've seen are differently arranged, numbered, shaped and coloured.

 

I have found an answer to at least part of this, if anyone is interested - http://bestquestions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/what-color-is-our-dna.html

 

DNA is white when extracted and crystals almost colourless. Xylem and Phloem tend to be colourless or faintly coloured and transparent. In books and other media images are often coloured for illustrative purposes. Numbering and colouring depending on the illustrator/author/publisher and what they are trying to get across.

 

Yes, I would agree with Nigel. Real pictures of DNA and many other small things are probably very bland and boring. So you often get an artists impression.

Sadly this happens in space exploration as well. I am always frustrated that most pictures on the TV don't say if they are real or just computer graphics.

 

A lot of satellite photographs, astronomy pictures etc are done in "false colour" were colours are assigned to different features so you can see the details.

 

Quite often, space pics have to be artificially coloured because muchof the detail is in a part of the spectrum that's invisible to us. For example, to cut through dust and to allow for red shift, much of the detail is in infrared or even longer wavelengths. Perfectly visible to the right sensors but completely invisible to our eyes, computer software assigns visible colours proportionally to the invisible wavelengths. For example, an image that is all in the infrared might have red mapped to the longest wavelength elements, sliding up through the spectrum to violet representing the shortest wavelengths but still only just in the infrared, just below visible red. That way we get to see a visible representation with colour graduation that accurately represents the subject.

 

Wow, I would never have considered that!

 

Thanks!

 

I agree clueless - sometimes you have false colours - but showing genuine information. The problem is that often you don't know and often they don't tell you.

 

I guess. If the pic is of something that is mostly gas, I assume it to be artificially coloured. Also, if it is very far away (i mean even by astronomical standards) then I again assume artificial colour, on the basis that very ancient light will have stretched with the expanding universe to the extent that the wavelengths are now longer than visible light.