AgentCell is the first simulation program to model a biochemical network at the molecular, single cell, and population levels simultaneously.
When a bacterium swims toward food, it follows a chaotic path, alternating between spinning randomly and driving forward, or ‘tumbling’ and ‘running.’ Computer scientists at...
Sep, 01, 2005
Disentangling the different types of skeptics and what modelers can learn from each.
What are the telltale signs of a modeling talk at a biology conference? Just look for the sighs, shifting, and eye-rolling in the audience, says Donald C. Bolser, PhD, professor of physiological...
Jun, 05, 2012
To understand biology—and provide appropriate medical care—scientists need to understand interactions across multiple scales. Hence the Physiome.
This is the reality of human biology: events span a 109 range in lengthscale (molecular to organismal) and a 1014 range in timescale (molecular movement to years). To understand this biology—...
Jun, 01, 2010
Assuring accuracy and efficiency
In simulations of human activities such as running, hundreds of individual musculotendon models turn on and off to swing the arms and legs. Naturally, these simulations can only be as accurate and...
Jun, 19, 2013
Simulations can teach us how young bodies and faces develop; how an artery compensates for decades of fatty plaque deposits by growing and thickening its walls; how tissue engineers can best coax endothelial cells to develop into organized sheets of skin for burn patients; and how cancerous tumors invade neighboring tissue.
For better or for worse, and on many levels, our tissues never stop growing and changing. While developing from childhood to old age, we grow not only bone, cartilage, fat, muscle and skin, but also...
Apr, 01, 2008
Biomechanical models contribute to a better understanding of both the normal and the diseased eye.
Squint, and you can almost make out that bird soaring over the horizon. But determining whether it’s a hawk or a raven will be nearly impossible for someone with myopia, also known as...
Feb, 19, 2013
Atomistic simulations have the potential to elucidate the molecular basis of biological processes such as protein misfolding in Alzheimer’s disease or the conformational changes that drive...
Jan, 01, 2010
A new application automates MSM visualization
An unfolded protein can move through thousands of intermediate structures (conformations) before finding its properly folded state. One approach to understanding this process involves simulating a...
Feb, 19, 2013
Bringing models closer to reality
When the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia launched on January 16, 2003, a large piece of foam fell off and hit the left wing. Alerted of the impact, NASA engineers used a computer model to predict...
Oct, 19, 2012
Moving from intuition to evidence-based intervention
To understand how muscles contract and joints flex, researchers have dissected cadavers and experimented with animals. They can describe how bones, muscles, and tendons connect in a complicated...
Jan, 01, 2007