Truncated Octahedron

A truncated octahedron contains six squares and eight hexagons. This is a view down the fourfold axis of one of the squares. Each edge of the truncated octahedron contains two double helical turns of DNA. The molecule contains 14 cyclic strands of DNA. Each face of the octahedron corresponds to a different cyclic strand. In this drawing, each nucleotide is shown with a colored dot corresponding to the backbone, and a white dot corresponding to the base. This picture shows the strand corresponding to the square at the center of the figure and parts of the four strands at the cardinal points of the figure. These strands are all shown with red backbones. In addition to the 36 edges of the truncated octahedron, each vertex contains a hairpin of DNA extending from it. These hairpins are all parts of the red strands that correspond to the squares. The strands corresponding to the hexagons are shown with backbones whose colors are yellow (upper right), cyan (upper left), magenta (lower left) and green (lower right). The molecular weight of this molecule as about 790,000 Daltons.

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