OpenWorm

OpenWorm is an international open science project for the purpose of simulating the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans at the cellular level.[1][2][3] 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.

As of 2014, a physics engine called Sibernetic has been built for the project and models of the neural connectome and a muscle cell have been created in 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,[4] a web-based multi-algorithm, multi-scale simulation platform engineered to support the simulation of the whole organism.[5]

  1. ^ Chirgwin, Richard (5 May 2014). "What's that PARASITE wriggling inside my browser? Nematode fanciers open their worm to a Kickstarter". The Register.
  2. ^ Palyanov, Andrey; Khayrulin, Sergey; Larson, Stephen D.; Dibert, Alexander (2012-01-01). "Towards a virtual C. elegans: A framework for simulation and visualization of the neuromuscular system in a 3D physical environment". In Silico Biology. 11 (3): 137–147. doi:10.3233/isb-2012-0445. ISSN 1386-6338. PMID 22935967.
  3. ^ Gewaltig, Marc-Oliver; Cannon, Robert (2014-01-23). "Current Practice in Software Development for Computational Neuroscience and How to Improve It". PLOS Computational Biology. 10 (1): e1003376. Bibcode:2014PLSCB..10E3376G. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003376. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 3900372. PMID 24465191.
  4. ^ Geppetto
  5. ^ Takahashi, Dean (30 April 2014). "Openworm is going to be a digital organism in your browser". VentureBeat.