Here is one of Magnuz of Sweden's projects in Second Life.

More images below

Chemistry of Life by Magnuz of Sweden intends to display molecules, reaction pathways and the animated chemical reactions which make up life itself. At present it just displays a platform and a piece of DNA, built by a scripted PDB-format (Protein Data Base atom positions) builder, intended as one of the core tool of the future development. The exhibition hovers high above ground, both to avoid fog and cloud interaction and not to disturb the originally more rustic character of the sim. It can be reached by teleportation or flying (with aid).

Location

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Honawan/32/36/401
The Chemistry of Life exhibition is located in the south-western part of the sim Honawan, a region of the old southern continent of Second Life. It is built on a hovering platform, some 300 meters above the ridge below.

Background

This theme was a natural step for a M.Sc. in chemistry with focus on biochemistry. Also, just like in my so far major project on astronomy i Second Life, the theme allows simple representation of many objects by simply using sphere primitives. Like in astronomy, much data about chemical structures are available on the web, most of it in the PDB (Protein Data Bank) format, which is the reason for the first step being a script building molecules from PDB files. The platform, elevating towards the middle, are intended to be populated with molecules and reaction models, with the simplest ones at the outer edges, and the more complex ones towards the center, with DNA, "the molecule of life", as the core.

Construction

I acquired the land for the theme park in the sim Honawan 2008-01-19 and built the platform and the piece of DNA there the day after. But already 2008-01-10 I had constructed the first molecule builder, starting out with a few simple molecules available as PDB data. Some small adjustments were made to the molecule builder 2008-01-20, before the present DNA molecule was built.

Future

The theme park will be further developed, adding many more molecules of life, interactive animated reactions, e.g. in enzyme reaction sites, and information in various formats. Before that, either the exhibition must be moved or some other projects in Honawan moved or terminated, since the prim count in the sim is almost full.

Images

Click on icons to open images in a new window or tab.

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  Magnuz1_012
  size: 1020x724 px, 100 kB
  description: view, object and avatar, DNA molecule and Magnuz Binder, 2008-06-25
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  Magnuz1_013
  size: 1020x724 px, 89 kB
  description: view, object and avatar, DNA molecule and Magnuz Binder, 2008-06-25
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  Magnuz1_014
  size: 1020x724 px, 108 kB
  description: view, object and avatar, DNA molecule and Magnuz Binder, 2008-06-25
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  Magnuz1_015
  size: 1020x724 px, 141 kB
  description: view, object and avatar, DNA molecule and Magnuz Binder, 2008-06-25