Today I want to present several options for drawing RNA and DNA. Even if you are not a chemist or biologist, it makes so much fun to play around with visualization of nucleic acid structures!
1. 2D RNA cartoons
Forna is a nice and convenient tool of RNA secondary structure visualization. You can use it directly in the browser without installing any software. Ready structures can be downloaded in png format and used further.
2. 3D RNA structures
There are a lot of specialized bioimaging programs for visualization of the 3D structures of nucleic acids, proteins etc. They are feature rich, but often very expensive. If you have no access to such items, I recommend to use Avogadro program. Avogadro is a free, open source molecular editor and visualization tool. In general, it is applicable to a wide range of molecules in computational chemistry, molecular modeling etc. A "builder for nucleic acid" tool is a pleasant option of Avogadro. However, it has some limitations in terms of sequences because it "knows" only single- and double-stranded helixes. Other forms or elements of DNA (triplex, quadruplex...) and RNA (bulges, internal loops...) are not available. But the structures look really nice!
1. 2D RNA cartoons
Forna is a nice and convenient tool of RNA secondary structure visualization. You can use it directly in the browser without installing any software. Ready structures can be downloaded in png format and used further.
2. 3D RNA structures
There are a lot of specialized bioimaging programs for visualization of the 3D structures of nucleic acids, proteins etc. They are feature rich, but often very expensive. If you have no access to such items, I recommend to use Avogadro program. Avogadro is a free, open source molecular editor and visualization tool. In general, it is applicable to a wide range of molecules in computational chemistry, molecular modeling etc. A "builder for nucleic acid" tool is a pleasant option of Avogadro. However, it has some limitations in terms of sequences because it "knows" only single- and double-stranded helixes. Other forms or elements of DNA (triplex, quadruplex...) and RNA (bulges, internal loops...) are not available. But the structures look really nice!
3. If you don't want to draw...
... you can find a huge library of ready images of nucleic acids, proteins, viruses and other biostructures here. Here is one example:
I hope that this material will be helpful for you. Enjoy!
