Heather Dewey-Hagborg extracts DNA from material and turns that into 3-D faces . It takes about eight hours to print one of Dewey-Hagborg 's faces in 3-D at NYU 's Advanced Media Studio . The researchers used a technique called "reverse genetics," which uses the same genetic code as in traditional genome sequencing to create new organisms with different characteristics than their parents. ` ` From a cigarette butt , I can learn where someone 's ancestors likely came from ... '' she says .
Heather Dewey-Hagborg extracts DNA from material and turns that into 3-D faces . The researchers used a technique called "reverse genetics," which uses the same genetic code as in traditional genome sequencing to create new organisms with different characteristics than their parents. `` From a cigarette butt , I can learn where someone 's ancestors likely came from ... '' she says .