App Detail » OnScreen DNA Model

Published by: OnScreen Science, Inc.

iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad

Price: $0.99
Current Version: 1.4
Released: February 19, 2011

What's New

Fixed problem that kept the Key to Model Components window from displaying. Simulated renaturation of DNA programmed to happen much faster.

App Description

How well can you 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 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 of DNA etc., then OnScreen DNA Model™ for OS X could be worth many times its small price to you.

OnScreen DNA Model for OS X provides you with a beautiful DNA model in 3D perspective to play with and to learn the basics of DNA structure from. To achieve basic scientific literacy in this age of biotechnology one needs to know what DNA's famous double helix structure looks like in three dimensions and what its constituent parts are, because the key to how DNA works in living organisms is its structure.

With readily accessible background material on DNA (and its molecules and chemical bonds), OnScreen Model is designed to introduce or review DNA structure, including details that are often skipped over or inadequately explained, such as the major and minor grooves.

Whether you're a student or teacher at any level or a person of any age who wants to get an intuitive feel for one of science's greatest discoveries, OnScreen DNA Model can make the learning of DNA's structure enjoyable and easy. And it will continue to serve as a reference for other reading and study you may undertake.

Care has been taken to give the model the correct handedness (right, not left, as in so many erroneous depictions), base pairs per turn, and a visual representation of DNA strand polarity. If you don't know exactly what handedness is, you will get a feel for it by being able to compare a right-handed model with a left-handed one (always labeled imaginary).

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

We may be biased, but 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].