Simulated cell (via the journal Cell)
Creating a complete digital model of an organism seemed farfetched just a few years ago. The processing power and data needed were simply too much for a computer to handle. That was then. Researchers at Stanford University led by Markus Covert have successfully created the world's first digital model of a complete organism. The idea of simulating cell behavior is not new and efforts have been made in the past to model processes such as protein synthesis and metabolism. The models and simulations help scientist study and understand processes that are just too complicated and difficult to study in the real world..
The researchers modeled Mycoplasma genitalium, the world's smallest free living bacteria. Although
the bacteria is one of the simplest known to man, possessing only 525 genes, it took almost 10 hours running on MATLAB software and a 128-core Linux cluster to simulate a single cell dividing only one time. In addition, the team was faced with the challenge of isolating more than 1,900 parameters and configuring them to correctly interact with one another. Data was collected from more than 900 scientific papers to assist in creating 28 categories of molecules, each governed by their own algorithm, to build an accurate model. As a result, the virtual model was so precise it predicted what the organism would look like from the genetic data alone.
Digital models such as this give scientist new insight into the organisms and help them understand nature in a way previously unavailable. Furthermore, computer simulations can help us understand more complicated diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. However, more complex organisms present significant challenges to overcome such as a much larger number of molecular interactions and an extremely large increase in genes involved. It may be a couple more years until we see a more complex organism such a E. Coli, which has 4,288 genes, successfully simulated virtually.
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