3DNA: A Tool for DNA Sculpting

Abstract: DNA self-assembly is a robust and programmable approach for building structures at nanoscale. Researchers around the world have proposed and implemented different techniques to build two dimensional and three dimensional nano structures. One such technique involves the implementation of DNA Bricks proposed by Ke et al., 2012 to create complex three-dimensional (3D) structures. Modeling these DNA nano structures can prove to be a cumbersome and tedious task. Exploiting the programmability of base-pairing to produce self-assembling custom shapes, we present a software suite 3DNA, which can be used for modeling, editing and visualizing such complex structures. 3DNA is an open source software which works on the simple and modular self assembly of DNA Bricks, offering a more intuitive better approach for constructing 3D shapes. Apart from modeling and envisaging shapes through a simple graphical user interface, 3DNA also supports an integrated random sequence generator that generates DNA sequences corresponding to the designed model. The software is available at www.guptalab.org/3dna