Section: Software

MicroMegas

Participant : Samuel Hornus.

Micromegas is a 3D modeler, developed as a plugin of Graphite, dedicated to molecular biology. It is developed in cooperation with the Fourmentin Guilbert foundation and has recently been renamed "GraphiteLifeExplorer". Biologists need simple spatial modeling tools to help in understanding the role of objects' relative position in the functioning of the cell. In this context, we develop a tool for easy DNA modeling. The tool generates DNA along any user-given curve, open or closed, allows fine-tuning of atoms' position and, most importantly, exports to PDB.

In 2012, its development has been actively pursued by Samuel Hornus in the first trimester. The software is freely downloadable. A paper describing will appear in the broad journal PLOS One [9] . A poster was also presented at the European Conference on Computational Biology in september 2012.