DNA Geometry with cadnano

Joey Bernard — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:30:00 +0000

This article introduces a tool you can use to work on three-dimensional DNA origami. The package is called cadnano, and it's currently being developed at the Wyss Institute. With this package, you'll be able to construct and manipulate the three-dimensional representations of DNA structures, as well as generate publication-quality graphics of your work.

Because this software is research-based, you won't likely find it in the package repository for your favourite distribution, in which case you'll need to install it from the GitHub repository.

Since cadnano is a Python program, written to use the Qt framework, you'll need to install some packages first. For example, in Debian-based distributions, you'll want to run the following commands:


sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip

I found that installation was a bit tricky, so I created a virtual Python environment to manage module installations.

Once you're in your activated virtualenv, install the required Python modules with the command:


pip3 install pythreejs termcolor pytz pandas pyqt5 sip

After those dependencies are installed, grab the source code with the command:


git clone https://github.com/cadnano/cadnano2.5.git

This will grab the Qt5 version. The Qt4 version is in the repository https://github.com/cadnano/cadnano2.git.

Changing directory into the source directory, you can build and install cadnano with:


python setup.py install

Now your cadnano should be available within the virtualenv.

You can start cadnano simply by executing the cadnano command from a terminal window. You'll see an essentially blank workspace, made up of several empty view panes and an empty inspector pane on the far right-hand side.

Figure 1. When you first start cadnano, you get a completely blank work space.

In order to walk through a few of the functions available in cadnano, let's create a six-strand nanotube. The first step is to create a background that you can use to build upon. At the top of the main window, you'll find three buttons in the toolbar that will let you create a "Freeform", "Honeycomb" or "Square" framework. For this example, click the honeycomb button.

Figure 2. Start your construction with one of the available geometric frameworks.

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