Software-aided design of idealised programmable nucleic acid circuits

The idea to use nucleic acid as a substrate for design of programmable biomolecular circuits was firstly introduced almost 4 decades ago, however, up till now, the field of DNA computing holds many challenges and uncertainties to be discovered. This chapter describes the historical evolution of DNA programming along with its most noticeable breakthroughs till the current days, describes the basics of such important theoretical concepts as DNA strand displacement and Abstract Chemical Reaction Networks, and finally, familiarizes the reader with various platforms for in-silico synthesis and simulation of genetic circuits.