The dawn of virtual cell biology

Abstract

To fulfill systems biology's promise of providing fundamental new insights will require the development of quantitative and predictive models of whole cells. In this issue, Karr et al. present the first integrated and dynamic computational model of a bacterium that accounts for all of its components and their interactions.

Figure 1. The Role of Whole-Cell Simulations in Modern Biology

As they mature, whole-cell models will integrate conceptual knowledge, low-throughput, and systems-level experimental information as inputs (the details of the modeling method used by Karr et al. (2012) is depicted as an example), and they will provide as output both quantitative predictions of unspecified parameters and qualitative information on previously unobserved behaviors. Initially, the primary focus of modelers must be to refine their models through a feedback loop of comparing predictions to both old and new focused experiments; as time goes on, however, model predictions will allow the proposal of new, testable hypotheses for previously unobserved organizing principles. In addition, the quantitative predictions of more refined whole-cell models should become increasingly useful in bioengineering applications.