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Use it today at school or home!
To make the BasePairPuzzle easier to use at school or home, we open the STL file data for 3D printers of simplified models free of charge. Your learning begins with coloring atoms such as hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Do It Yourself with commercially available inks, neodymium magnets, and glue.
* Since the structure of T in DNA is complicated, data for U in RNA is available for DIY.
* Commercial products are made of multiple parts in different colors, and special surface treatment is applied after each base is assembled. On the other hand, the simplified model shown here is made of single-colored parts, so you need to color hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and other atoms by yourself.
* Please cite this website or following website when using it in educational settings.
Jiro Kondo* & Shota Nakamura. "BasePairPuzzle: Molecular Models for Manipulating the Concept of Hydrogen Bonds and Base Pairs in Nucleic Acids" J. Chem. Edu. 2023 published online.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00964
How to make
1) Use the downloaded STL file to output the base parts on your 3D printer. We recommend using resin with different colors (orange for A, green for C, cyan for G, and purple for U).
2) Use commercially available ink to color hydrogen white, nitrogen blue, and oxygen red.
3) After coloring, dry well using a hair dryer.
4) Use glue to embed commercially available cylindrical neodymium magnets (4 mm in diameter and 4 mm in height) into the holes. At this point, be careful that the S-pole faces outward at the hydrogen positions, and the N-pole faces outward at the nitrogen and oxygen positions. That's it! It's time to play!
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