alt Hacker NewsDNA Learning Center: Mechanism of Replication 3D Animation
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Hey, working at the DNALC was my first job when I was in high school. I made a port of their iOS 3D brain app for Android, based on pre-rendered images (which was the style at the time - 2009-ish). It looks like it has since been taken down, which makes sense - I targeted my G1 at the time for acceptable performance, and Android broke things as it moved on. I also helped out on some web apps at the time. Great experience.
https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/products/3d-brain-app.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20230307055457/https://play.goog...
Complete list of DNALC animations here: https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/animations/
Some favorites:
https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/3d/13-transcription-advance...
https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/3d/16-translation-advanced....
https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/3d/08-how-dna-is-packaged-a...
With how massively parallel the human body is, this process is copying DNA at an average rate of around 1 million miles per hour if you put all the DNA into a single string. (Consider that each human cell contains about 2 metres worth of DNA)
It would be so cool if we could (Maybe it's been done?) do this with a simulation!
"Intricate as this mechanism appears, numerous components have been deliberately left out to avoid complete confusion" :D
One name you'll find associated with many of these animations is Drew Berry.
If I had these when I was in high school in the 80s I truly think I would have gone into molecular biology. They are obviously have flaws in terms of a true representation of the process, but it makes the machine much more apparent and that's always been the thing that kept it at bay for me.
More of this style of animation can be found in the WEHImovies channel on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@WEHImovies/videos