Using English words like “blue eyes” to represent genes in DNA strings with the DNA Writer runs the risk that students start to wonder if actual genes are coded in English.

I’d say it was a small risk, but today I did have that question from a couple of students today.

Fortunately, it was quite easy to disabuse them of the impression: they didn’t actually believe it, but they just had to know for sure.

I did like one of the questions though, “Does that mean that Spanish people have DNA written in Spanish?”

Embedding the Tiles

With that caveat, since I, and a few of my students, like the pretty patterns the DNA Writer produces (see above), I created a way to embed the color sequences into other webpages like this blog.

By default, the embedded image links back to the DNA Writer website, but you can adjust it so that it does not. Instead, the nucleobase tiles will change color when you click on them. The color changing helps keep track of where you are if you’re trying to string the sequence in beads.

For academic purposes, you can also change the message you get when the mouse hovers over the tiles. By default it give the plain English translation, but you can make it say whatever you want, or even have it just show the base sequence.