Text-based DNA amimation

[simsmj]

It's been a while since I posted anything, so here is something I rattled up this evening. I was playing with some text having seen something similar on a BBC program on famous diagrams, this one being specifically about DNA. There are clearly many different ways to represent the DNA helix, and I have done others in the past.

It uses Rotate2 animation with the Wave option set at 999%, and set horizontally.

Mike

[Soquili]

Mike that is awesome, as usual with your posts.

[handrawn]

oh very nice

now is it coming or going, or does it just depend on how you look at it

[simsmj]

Well, being a double strand, it does both! One strand spirals left to right, the other spiral right to left. If you look at the individual base-pairs, one base letter is upside-down relative to its partner. In XaraXtreme, I just created two lines, |---A=T---|, and |---G=C---|, and rotated the second base letter in each line 180 degrees. I then copied each line, and rotated the whole line 180 degrees, thus giving me four lines, with both strands having one each of ATGC, but one strand being upside-down. In a later version, I replaced the vertical bar with the letters -DNA-, and oriented this opposite ways on each strand. This was to emphasise the directionality of the strand backbone.

Mike

[simsmj]

Actually, I should replace the -DNA- with -sugar-phosphate-, to be more technically correct, but it would be very difficult to read without spacing out the base-pairs too far!

Mike

[wizard509]

You never cease to amaze me. Good one.

[Hwy101]

It's been a while since I posted anything, so here is something I rattled up this evening. I was playing with some text having seen something similar on a BBC program on famous diagrams, this one being specifically about DNA. There are clearly many different ways to represent the DNA helix, and I have done others in the past.

It uses Rotate2 animation with the Wave option set at 999%, and set horizontally.

Mike

Great Graphic Mike! Thanks for sharing - Tom aka Hwy101

[lwc]

Very clever indeed... well done!

[zaphodeist]

Excellent stuff!

[simsmj]

Thanks for the nice comments. I afarid I have been playing a bit more

This is version 5, with a smoother strand backbone, acheived with three lines per base-pair. Essentially the N of DNA backbone strands is part of the base-pair line, with the A and opposite D on separate lines. This lets them take up intermediate positions between the main base-pair lines in the Wave. Adjusting overall line size lets the angle of twist be varied to taste.

Mike