The elegant selectivity of Watson-Crick base-pairing makes DNA an extremely useful tool for the construction of nanoscale objects and machines. Stable structures and mechanical cycles can be programmed into a system of single strands by careful choice of the sequences of bases.

Despite the experimental successes, there is no clear theoretical description of the processes involved. Our goal is to develop a coarse-grained model of DNA, detailed enough to capture the essential physics of assembly processes, yet simple enough to be applicable over long time scales. Code, user guides and examples for simulating the model can be downloaded from this site.

We are currently using the model to develop and understand walking DNA devices, in collaboration with the pioneering experimental group of Andrew Turberfield.

We are also interested in using and developing efficient algorithms to simulate our models - in particular Monte Carlo algorithms which move clusters of particles.