Designing DNA nanostructures can be both inspiring and time-consuming. Whether you’re creating wireframes, nanotubes, or lattice-based geometries, designing similar components repeatedly across projects can become tedious. This is where component saving in Adenita becomes particularly useful: it allows you to reuse parts of your DNA designs rather than recreating everything from the beginning.
Adenita, integrated into the SAMSON platform, includes the possibility to save specific components of your design using the .adnpart format. This small yet practical feature helps molecular modelers streamline their workflows and preserve modularity across experiments and models.
Why save components?
If you’ve just built a well-optimized DNA nanotube segment, why remake it each time you launch a new project? If you frequently use scaffolds arranged in a specific way or a base unit of a wireframe shape, being able to save and reload only that segment instead of managing an entirely new SAMSON document makes your research smoother and more organized.
How to save and reuse parts of your design
Adenita allows you to save parts of your design with just a couple of clicks. Use the interface as follows:
- Select the component you wish to save.
- Click the
icon in the main Adenita interface toolbar. - Save the component in
.adnpartformat, a custom format designed for compatibility with Adenita.
Later on, you can load these files into any SAMSON workspace with Adenita. Components remain editable and compatible with other DNA models you are working on, allowing combinations with new strands, proteins, or different DNA structures.
This export/import method also ensures you’re not at the mercy of entire previous documents. Instead of relying on bulky files with unrelated objects, you can bring only what you need into each workspace.
Tips for working with saved components
- Organize your files: Name and catalog saved
.adnpartcomponents carefully to locate and reuse them easily. - Modular design: Think ahead while creating your structures—design in modules that can be saved and recombined later.
- Be aware of compatibility: Ensure that the connections between loaded components and new strands are logically designed to avoid unnecessary strand breaking later.
Practical example
Imagine you’ve created a triangular DNA wireframe structure using the Daedalus algorithm: you can save each segment of the triangle as a separate .adnpart file. In your next project, if you want to construct a hexagonal structure, you can reuse those triangle sides and merge them accordingly using Adenita’s merge tool.
Conclusion
Saving components in Adenita can significantly reduce redundancy and help you approach your nanoscale architectures in a more modular and maintainable way. Whether you’re building repetitive structures or just want to keep a library of stable units, this feature gives you a compact, user-friendly path forward.
Ready to make your workflow a bit easier? Learn more in the Adenita documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Download the platform and start modeling at samson-connect.net.