App Detail » OnScreen DNA Model for iPhone

Published by: OnScreen Science, Inc.

iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad

Price: $0.99
Current Version: 2.2.1
Released: May 11, 2010

What's New

This app has been updated by Apple to use the latest Apple signing certificate.

Built for iOS 6-8, tested on iOS 8.1. No feature changes from previous version. Added video preview to App Store description.

App Description

**CONTAINS NO ADS ** Tested on iOS 8. This is an interactive, color-coded, 3D model with animations and background material for learning the essential details of DNA's structure and chemical components. Scientifically accurate.

How well can you (or your students) visualize the 3D structure of the DNA molecule? Can you spot erroneous depictions of DNA as a left-handed double helix? If you're not satisfied with your (or their) level of understanding of DNA structure or would like to have at your fingertips an instant memory refresher for which nucleotides pair with each other in the double helix etc., then OnScreen DNA Model for iPhone could be worth many times its small price to you.

OnScreen DNA Model provides you with a beautiful--especially on retina displays--color-coded, rotatable, virtual 3D model to play with and to learn the basics of DNA structure, the key to how DNA works in living organisms.

With readily accessible background material on DNA (and its molecules and chemical bonds), OnScreen DNA Model is an excellent way of introducing or reviewing DNA structure, including details that are often skipped over or inadequately explained, such as the major and minor grooves.

Care has been taken to give the model the correct handedness (right, not left, as in so many erroneous depictions), correct number of base pairs per turn, and a visual representation of DNA strand polarity, that is how DNA strands are directional and whether the two strands point in the same direction or not (not). The molecular (as opposed to atomic) level of detail has been chosen to highlight the double helix structure and what differentiates DNA's constituent nucleotides.

The app also offers a couple of simulations that show laboratory phenomena--denaturation and renaturation--important in biotechnology and DNA study. You can see the two DNA strands completely separate under simulated heating that breaks the chemical bonds which normally keep them together in their intertwined helices. Then the strands can recombine in a satisfying display of bonds’ reforming and strands rewinding.

Even after many months of working on OnScreen DNA Model, we still think it’s fun to play with and still enjoy looking at this beautiful natural geometrical form rotating on our screen. We hope you will too. Comments and questions are welcome at [email protected].