RNA Polymerase makes RNA from DNA. This protein is the transcriber of messages from the nucleus to the ribosomes in the cytoplasm, to tell them what proteins to make! This particular one is a tiny example from the T7 bacteriophage! It's tiny because it has to fit in a virus. "Normal" polymerases, like the kind found in your cells, are 10-20x bigger, and made of many many cofactors and regualatory proteins. The fact is that viruses care less about the quality of RNA they produce than do human cells. It's part of the reason why viruses mutate so fast.

from 1MSW on pdb

Instructions

Print out both halves, and glue them together! I included support structures because when I designed the two halves model I didn't know about any slicers that could do support material well, so it was sliced in slic3r and printed on my repstrap with ABS (yellowish one). I made the second one (silver one in the photo) using KISSlicer's support feature, and that was printed on my ultimaker, using medium support density.

Two models, one with the model split apart into two halves, and another with the whole thing for those who want to delve into support structures.

Category: Biology