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Computational Simulations of E.coli
Gearoid_Murphy writes, "BBC news has the story of a scientist who has been using computational models of bacteria to advance our understanding of actual bacteria — a step towards simulating fully fledged organisms in virtual environments and potentially an extraordinarily powerful tool for medical science."
"Any little corner of a living cell is just full of complicated machinery and molecules."
Machinery implies a machinist. Ergo God is a coverall-wearing, coolant-spattered, filing-covered graveyard shift joe job worker.
BBC news has the story of a scientist who has been using computational models of bacteria to advance our understanding of actual bacteria
So the story is a simulation that actually simulates what it's simulating? (Isn't that what a simulation's suppose to do? Model and echo what happens in the real world)
How stimulating.
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This guy just warezed a copy of Spore and his keygen drops a trojan.
We'll start with bacteria and move our way up to humans! ;)
Hopefully this would eventually allow risky medial treatments to be simulated before they have to be performed with a scan of the patients physiology as a reference.
Shh.
for once, it's something I give a couple of shits about
... a fully 3D representation of the work-counter of a kebab shop, where the E-Coli simulation starts?
What next? Is some bored dude going to do a computer model on just what is it that makes Anna Nicole Smith stupid?
I dont know about you, but when do we get the computer models showing exactly why Guinness tastes better than Budweiser, so someone can share that data in time to save me some damn money?
" a step towards simulating fully fledged organisms in virtual environments and potentially an extraordinarily powerful tool for medical science " Well we just need to wait for Spore, amiright?
And these things are walking up and down my ass? Yikes.
Hence, discrepancies between what the scientists see in biological experiments and what they see in the simulations allows them to test the models. If there is a mismatch it suggests the model is incorrect and needs to be refined.
Wow, that kinda sounds like.. umm, what's the word I'm after here, umm, science, yes, that's it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
SIMS...
That article pretty much sucks for communicating anything that the scientist is doing. I won't remedy that, but I'll say this: I audited a biophysics class two semesters ago, and the astounding complications of what goes on in cells was a real eye-opener. Of course, I'd learned about chemical pathways, and mitochondria, etc., before, but the class showed how damned complicated and *fast* everything is at the cellular scale.
The professor used this analogy: think of filling a football/soccer (your choice) stadium with ping-pong balls, and paint just two of those balls orange. Then hire some bulldozers to push the balls around randomly and continuously for several decades. How often will the orange balls collide with each other? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Maybe only once in a decade? Now envision the stadium scaled down to the size of a cell, with the ping-pong balls now being your average-sized molecule important for some process (chunks of amino acids, say). These will be moving around randomly due to Brownian motion, chemical gradients, etc. How often will two given molecules interact? Probably several times per second. THAT's how amazingly extreme cellular processes are.
It's that sort of analogy (sorry it wasn't about cars, but we could probably work those in somehow) that the article should have had. This stuff is complicated, and requires VERY efficient computation. Kudos to the researchers, and pfft! to the author of the article.
Here is a clue, hippie: Find something else on which to base your self-esteem.
Now, get back to the line, and don't forget to bag your sandals.
Wow, figures. I actually used TFA for my Cambridge application -- nice to see it appearing on /. albeit slightly later than I expected. Really though, Cambridges Computer Science Lab (funded by our friend Bill Gates, among others) is doing some amazing things. Check out their website at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/.
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Don't have to revive old bacteries and let the life flow :) We aren't going to die!!! Weeeeeeeee!
ghostbar page.
I bet he just used Conway's Game of Life.
You don't need to know *WHY* Guinness tastes better than Budweiser, all you need to know is that Guinness *DOES* taste better than Budweiser. Thus you can spend your money on quality beer right from the outset.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I've had E.Coli before, but I'm not quite sure what a computational simulation of severe diarrhea would look like; maybe Microsoft code?
Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects. -Dave Barry
I dont know what they modelled but I know why they modelled it. So that the California Spinach farmers can claim, "No E Coli was actually harmed in filming this commercial".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They had articles like this ten years ago, that some grad student somewhere simulated an "actual bacterium" on a PC. The topic is useful primarily as a graduate student's thesis topic, along with "robotic simulations".
a step towards simulating fully fledged organisms in virtual environments..
Yeah but it's like, a really small step isn't it? You couldn't do anything useful with it except maybe simulate Dubya's cerebral activity, and that's not very useful at all.
And besides, didn't you hear: Virtual Environments/Machines are going to be banned on Vista!
I don't know this research, and the article doesn't really say anything at all, but as a grad student who has done a lot of cell modeling research, I like his approach of limiting the model to something very simple and easy to verify. We are a long, long way off from "simulating fully fledged organisms in virtual environments". Probably not in our lifetimes. You just have no idea how complex even E. coli is until you study it, and if you have, you'll understand how primitive and limited our models are.
Duddeee....I pray to good you beat off into your socks, we can't have retards like you breeding!....re-read what you posted....don't you just feel like the biggest loser??
TFA (that is customary not to read) may be short on substance but it can also be said "I can pull results out of my arse", science = observations + models, you cannot judge any result without access to the observations and a basic understanding of the model.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Reminds me of this book (I think I got the right name, read it a couple of years ago.)
Hard-scifi, check it out!