DNA Ball and Stick Model Base Pair

thingiverse

This is a model of a DNA base pair that I recently turned into a 3D print. This model was made similar to my previous models using VMD and Tinkercad. I built it so you can print out multiple copies and glue them together to make a scaled double helix. At the current time, I only have the one base pair, with is AT. I tried flipping it over to make it TA, but it seemed to skew the helix, so I just put mine together as though it was polyA. I think it worked out quite well, and broke out the paints to put 5 of them together. I think it needs about 10 to make it really show the major and minor groove well, but that will have to come later. I am posting it here, and also put together some tutorials on YouTube in case someone wants to see how we go about doing these. Instructions I built this a little bit too small in TinkerCad. My suggestion is that if you download it, you scale the entire thing up to 150%, which is what I did so you can get a decent print. It is quite robust. It does need a raft, but should not need any supports. I made it so you can easily remove the supports. You will need to do a little bit of trimming if you want to put multiple components together (similar to what we did with cellulose), but then it glues together nicely with Model Cement. I printed it on an older MakerBot II at medium quality level.