When working on complex DNA nanostructures, molecular modelers often need to reuse specific design elements across multiple projects. Rebuilding frequently used motifs from scratch wastes time and increases the risk of error. Adenita, the DNA nanostructure editor in SAMSON, provides a convenient way to solve this problem: by allowing users to save individual components of their design as reusable building blocks.
Instead of managing entire scenes or documents, Adenita supports saving specific DNA components in the .adnpart format. This is a key feature for users who want to create a modular workflow, where common domains or modules can be saved once and used across multiple structures.
Two ways to save your work in Adenita:
- Full structure save: saves the entire design as a
.adnfile, which captures all DNA nanostructures in your current SAMSON document. - Component save: saves selected parts (one or more components) as
.adnpartfiles. This enables component reusability without loading unrelated structures.
Here’s how you can save a component for reuse:
- Select the component you want to save in your workspace.
- In the Adenita toolbar, click the
icon. - Choose a filename and location — the file will be saved as
.adnpart.
You can later load a saved component using the 
icon and inserting it into an existing document. There is no limitation on the number of components you add — it mostly depends on your hardware capabilities.
This feature is especially useful when:
- You want to maintain a library of reusable staples, junctions, or motifs.
- You collaborate with colleagues and want to share an individual module without a full design.
- You iterate on a specific part of a design and want to track intermediate versions.
Storing components also encourages modular thinking in DNA nanotechnology, where designs can be built from smaller validated parts. As you expand your design toolkit, you can build a personal collection of DNA nanostructure modules for rapid prototyping and teaching.
To learn more and explore additional features like component merging, tagging, and exporting for simulation, visit the official Adenita documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.