Simulation Step Size Analysis of a Whole-Cell Computational Model of Bacteria.

Understanding how complex phenotypes arise from individual molecules and their interactions is a major challenge in biology and, to meet this challenge, computational approaches are increasingly employed. As an example, a recent paper [1] proposed a whole-cell model Mycoplasma genitalium including all cell components and their interactions. 28 modules representing several cell functions were modeled independently, and then integrated into a single computational model. One assumption considered in the whole-cell model of M.Genitalium is that all 28 modules can be modeled independently given the 1 second step size used in simulations. This is a major assumption, since it simplifies the modeling of several cell functions and makes the modeling of the system as a whole feasible. In this paper we investigate the dependency of experimental results on that assumption. We have simulated the M.Genitalium cell cycle using several simulation time step sizes and compared the results to the ones obtained with the system using 1 second simulation time step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]