Cells In Sillico – Parallel Tissue Development Simulation

Insights in cell dynamics and tissue development are constantly changing our understanding of fundamental biological processes including embryogenesis, wound healing, and tumorigenesis. The availability of high-quality microscopy data and an increasing understanding of single-cell effects are speeding up discoveries. However, many computational models still describe either a few cells in high detail or larger cell ensembles and tissues in rather coarse detail. We combine these two scales, therefore we developed a highly parallel version of the cellular Potts model and provides an agent-based model for controlling cellular events. The model can be modularly extended to a multimodel simulation at both scales. Based on the NAStJA framework, we implemented a scalable version that runs efficiently on high-performance computing systems. Our model scales beyond 10,000 cores in an approximately linear manner, enabling the simulation of large three-dimensional tissues. The strictly modular design allows flexible configuration of arbitrary models and enables applications in a wide range of research questions. Cells in Silico can be easily adapted to different modeling assumptions and helps computational scientists to extend their simulations to a new area of tissue simulations. ... mehrAs an example, we show a 1000^3 voxel cancer tissue simulation with sub-cellular resolution.