A Haptic Enabled DNA Model Sensing

The science of haptics has received enormous attention in the last decade. One of the major application trends of haptics technology is data visualization and training. In this paper, we present our work towards developing a haptically enabled model for the structure of DNA. The graphic model of the DNA strand is made up of individual base pair models. The environment presents two views of the model: a global view that reflects the real stretching forces for a 5000 base pair strand and a 40 base pair portion of the strand to display the twisting of the molecules. The addition of the haptic model enables users to feel the stretching and twisting forces while manipulating the model through the PHANTOMreg Desktop haptic device. Since the interaction forces are in the piconewton range, the forces applied by/to the user are scaled accordingly. The model can serve as a good instructional aid for helping users to understand the molecular structure of DNA through effective visual representation and interactive manipulation. In incorporating more physical details, it may also have a future use in simulating protein and enzyme interactions with DNA.