2021/11/23 by David Shallom, Danny Naiger, Shlomo Weiss +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Biology #Computational biology #Computer science #Focus (optics) #Gene #Genetics #Messenger RNA #Physics #Process (computing) #Programming language #RNA #RNA Research and Splicing #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #RNA modifications and cancer #Ribosome #Saccharomyces cerevisiae #Software #Synthetic biology #Translation (biology) #Yeast
paper · doi:10.1021/acssynbio.1c00415
openalex publication_date 2021/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide In recent years, intracellular biophysical simulations have been used with increasing frequency not only for answering basic scientific questions but also in the field of synthetic biology. However, since these models include networks of interaction between millions of components, they are extremely time-consuming and cannot run easily on parallel computers. In this study, we demonstrate for the first time a novel approach addressing this challenge by using a dedicated hardware designed specifically to simulate such processes. As a proof of concept, we specifically focus on mRNA translation, which is the process consuming most of the energy in the cell. We design a hardware that simulates translation in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae for thousands of mRNAs and ribosomes, which is in orders of magnitude faster than a similar software solution. With the sharp increase in the amount of genomic data available today and the complexity of the corresponding models inferred from them, we believe that the strategy suggested here will become common and can be used among others for simulating entire cells with all gene expression steps.