4 ms·

It looks like they have modeled the subprocesses of the cell and run a simulation of an assembly of those, instead of actually running (for example) a physics s

• SilasX 14y ago
  It says it was a bacterium. So in that case, single cell = organism.
• reitzensteinm 14y ago
  There are 7 * 10^9 carbon atoms in E Coli [1], so we're probably a decade or two away from being able to do any kind of simulation at the atomic level. Though it's probably getting close to the point where getting the right algorithms is the bottleneck; if you could somehow bring the techniques and optimizations we'll inevitably learn over the next 100 years back to today, a half decent simulation would probably already be possible on a cluster of commodity hardware. Unless the techniques revolve around a new method of computation, of course - maybe memristor logic helps with that kind of thing. [1] http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?s=y&id=103010&ver=0 http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?s=y&id=...
• bugsbunnyak 14y ago
  Atomic-level would be overkill for a lot of cellular processes. It's certainly crucial for protein interactions (for example), but affinity/dissociation constants are well-characterized so modelling individual binding site interaction isn't going to make a difference at the (relatively) macro level.