For less than $200 you can have your full mitochondrial DNA sequenced. Cool!
Staring at the resulting text file on a computer monitor is a bit lackluster however...
How about a physical scale model?
16,570 hand strung 1 mm glass beads joined in a loop - The beaded pattern corresponding exactly to the base pair sequence.
Painstakingly checked and rechecked for accuracy. This strand exactly replicates my personal mitochondrial DNA sequence. Different colors represent the base pairs.
White - Guanine ~ 2169 beads
Purple - Adenine ~ 5124 beads
Green - Cytosine ~ 5181 beads
Orange - Thymine ~ 4094 beads
A relaxed mtDNA strand has a length of about 5.61 Micrometers (~16,500bp*340 pm).
The finished beaded sequence is close to 60 feet.
=> 3 million times larger than the actual mtDNA loop.
Components
3×
TOHO Round Seed Bead 15/0 Purple Lined Aqua (8g packs)
http://beads.artbeads.com/jewelry-supplies/Tbrd15--252
2×
TOHO Round Seed Bead 15/0 Opaque White (8g packs)
http://www.artbeads.com/tbrd15-41.html
3×
TOHO Round Seed Bead 15/0 Transparent Medium Green (10g packs)
http://www.auracrystals.com/products/toho-round-seed-bead-15-0-transparent-medium-green-10g-15-7b
2×
TOHO Round Seed Bead 15/0 Transparent Medium Orange (10g packs)
http://www.auracrystals.com/products/toho-round-seed-bead-15-0-transparent-medium-orange-10g-15-10b
The colors correspond to the binding energy of the base pairs - I made a macro to color the cells and mark them off as I progressed - Always double checking each segment.