  The Geant4-DNA project proposes to develop an open-source simulation software
based and fully included in the general-purpose Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation
toolkit. The main objective of this software is to simulate biological damages
induced by ionising radiation at the cellular and sub-cellular scale. This
project was originally initiated by the European Space Agency for the
prediction of deleterious effects of radiation that may affect astronauts
during future long duration space exploration missions. In this paper, the
Geant4-DNA collaboration presents an overview of the whole ongoing project,
including its most recent developments already available in the last Geant4
public release (9.3 BETA), as well as an illustration example simulating the
direct irradiation of a chromatin fibre. Expected extensions involving several
research domains, such as particle physics, chemistry and cellular and
molecular biology, within a fully interdiciplinary activity of the Geant4
collaboration are also discussed.
