DeoxyLEGOnucleic Acid
(Originally posted: 9th April 2007)
Last week I just happened upon the website of professional Lego modeller Eric Harshbarger, and more specifically, this page where he describes a miniature model of DNA built entirely of Lego. Well, I just had to have myself one of those, so I printed out Eric’s photograph and headed off to BrickLink to see if I could get the required bits.
A couple of days later (and many thanks to Simply Bricks and The Brick Shiphouse) I had several bags of brightly coloured bricks waiting for me and a molecular model to make:
Isn’t it fantastic? Crick and Watson would be proud.
If you want to build your own Lego DNA model (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you) here’s a handy shopping list; total cost for new bricks should be about £6:
DNA Molecule:
- 40 off: Technic Brick 1×2 with Hole
- 80 off: Round Brick 1×1
- 20 off: Technic Pin
Base:
- 1 off: Round Plate 8×8
- 1 off: Plate 2×8
- 4 off: Plate 1×2 with 1 Stud
- 2 off: Tile 2×2
As you can see from the photo, I built the two helices from different coloured bricks which makes them stand out quite nicely, so you’ll need twenty of each colour.
And for the base pairs: I don’t think there’s a universally accepted coding so pick four colours of your choice. Remember though that they only appear in two forms; Adenine only ever bonds with Thymine (A-T) and Guanine only ever bonds with Cytosine (G-C). Again, twenty of each colour is probably a good place to start; you’ll certainly have enough to spell out GATTACA.
Of course, you’re going to need to make about 220 million base pairs if you want to model your own DNA and that’s a whole lot of Lego…
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