OpenWorm

OpenWorm is an international open science project to simulate the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans at the cellular level as a simulation. Although the long-term goal is to model all 959 cells of the C. elegans, the first stage is to model the worm's locomotion by simulating the 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells. This bottom up simulation is being pursued by the OpenWorm community. So far the physics engine Sibernetic has been built and models of the neural connectome and a muscle cell have been created in the NeuroML format. A 3D model of the worm anatomy can be accessed through the web via the OpenWorm browser. The OpenWorm project is also contributing to develop Geppetto, a web-based multi-algorithm, multi-scale simulation platform engineered to support the simulation of the whole organism.

The roundworm C. elegans has one of the simplest nervous systems of any organism, with its hermaphrodite type having only 302 neurons. Furthermore, the structural connectome of these neurons is fully worked out. There are fewer than one thousand cells in the whole body of a C. elegans worm, each with a unique identifier and comprehensive supporting literature because C. elegans is a model organism. Being a model organism, the genome is fully known, along with many well characterized mutants readily available, a comprehensive literature of behavioural studies, etc. With so few neurons and new calcium 2 photon microscopy techniques it should soon be possible to record the complete neural activity of a living organism. By manipulating the neurons through optogenetic techniques, combined with the above recording capacities the project is in an unprecedented position to be able to fully characterize the neural dynamics of an entire organism.

In trying to build an "in silico" model of a relatively simple organism like C. elegans, new tools are being developed which will make it easier to model more complex organisms.

Project Nemaload was a research program which is trying to empirically establish the relevant biological facts which are necessary for a true bottom up simulation. The project founder, David Dalrymple, is a collaborator on the OpenWorm project.

...
Wikipedia