First-ever complete software simulation of an entire organism

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/20/first_complete_computer_model_of_cell/

M. genitalium genome contains just 525 genes, making it the world's smallest free-living bacterium.

http://wholecell.stanford.edu/

SuperInfinity

Terrible news, the beginning of the end for human beings.

Rynox45

This is pretty awesome, only a matter of time until Moore's law lets us make the most detailed Sims game ever.

josey_whale

I think this is a great example of convergence.

As a scientist, I see so many articles being published on a particular subject. They are all disparate, only contributing a small piece to the jigsaw. Of course you can read every article ever published on that particular subject, and if you are smart enough you might be able to join the dots and come up with a true understanding of the whole.

What impressed me most about this article, was how they they were able to take 1900 experimentally observed parameters from 900 publications and input these into their model.

The concept of convergence, has been around for quite a while, but is now really gaining momentum with the ability to link data.

Incidentally, The DERI institute in at NUIGalway is at the forefront of this technology. Below is an example

josey_whale

Another great example of convergence... "Predictive computation of genomic logic processing functions in embryonic development".

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1207852109

In a way this is very crude stuff. On the flip side, it's only in the last decade have we begun to understand how regulatory genes work.

So, if gene A is on, then genes B and C will turn off. Now we know that if gene AA is on, then gene B and C are off, but also that gene X, Y and Z are also off.

Plug all these if-then statements into a model....

countrynosebag

superinfinity
hello, nipped in for nosy, not sufficientlu up-to-date or expert enough in this area to add meaningful discourse
it was rather funny........i thought the exact opposite to you about all of the above - i was thrilled and again, as with all applications, it is rarely the application itself but the application of it, sometimes the 'why' is all important
i would think of the possibility of repair i.e. medical usage
the good this could do eventually - staggering to contemplate the future (if the human race has one) and what could be the saving of the body
does anyone know any applications for the proper usage of the brain at all?