A Visual Quine?

I love quines. But, I must admit, I’m not deeply versed in programming language theory. So I decided to play with quines in a very different realm: at the intersection of biology, images, and the visual system.

Specifically, I set out to answer the following question: are there any quines that work simply by looking at them?

It turns out that a basic biochemical mechanism within our eyes is that of the visual cycle, a biochemical process within the photoreceptors of our retinas. As the first step when light is received, a chemical with a specific shape known as 11-cis-retinal is modified into a slightly different chemical: all-trans retinal or simply, retinal.

In other words, by looking at the following image of retinal, your body is making more of this actual chemical within your retinas:

Now, of course, this is a picture and not the actual chemical itself, in much the same way that Magritte’s painting is not actually a pipe. However, you can actually purchase retinal as a powder and by looking at this powder, make more of it within your body. So perhaps retinal itself is the true quine (or at least something quine-like).

But for now, let us content ourselves with gazing upon the image of the chemical structure of retinal, with the direct result of making it within our bodies.