The Molecular Programming Project: Molecular Programming Architectures, Abstractions, Algorithms, and Applications

Our Expeditions in Computing aimed to establish the foundations for molecular programming as a new discipline within computer science. A molecular program is a collection of molecules that may perform a computation, fabricate an object, or control a system of molecular sensors and actuators. Molecular programming borrows from computer science and electrical engineering for conceptual foundations of programmable information-processing machines and their design using programming languages and abstractions; from biology for inspiration and examples of information-based molecular machines; from chemistry for understanding and control of atomic-level interactions; and from physics for statistical mechanical principles of nanoscale systems operating in a heat bath. Theoretical and experimental research at Harvard University has pioneered molecular self-assembly with DNA bricks, DNA and RNA origami foundations and applications, molecular information recording, and logic computation in living cells.