Overview
Metacellular Automata:
A lattice dynamics model in which time, space and state are discrete, and spatial interactions and temporal causality are local, have the ability to simulate the spatio-temporal evolution of complex systems. In brief, metacellular automata is like a Go game. When you put a piece in a grid, it must have an effect on the grid around it. Metacellular automata is a similar idea, changing the state in some lattices and thus affecting the surrounding lattices.
Metacellular automata is a powerful tool for visualizing and simulating cell populations and demonstrating the cell proliferation and movement process. For this purpose, our team developed Metacellular automata simulation, which allows users to input their own cell parameters to simulate the process of CAR-NK92 and other engineered cells against tumor cells, and plot the number change curve in real time for researchers' reference. The simulation results obtained can provide guidance for wet experiments.
Why Metacellular Automata Simulation needed?
1.The outbreak of the pandemic makes it difficult to perform wet experiments: until today, COVID-19 is still spreading around the world, and some IGEM teams are affected by the pandemic and find it difficult to perform wet experiments, so they urgently need a software that can simulate cell proliferation through software. This software requires IGEMers to sit in front of the screen, click the mouse, and easily complete the "electronic cell cultivation".
2.Cultivation of cells is time-consuming and labor-intensive: as we all know, cell culture is an important and critical part of wet experiments, and the whole process requires a lot of human and material resources. The slightest carelessness in the operation steps can lead to cell contamination and abandonment of previous work.
3.It is difficult to dynamically monitor the process of tumor killing by engineered cells: It is the dream of every biology researcher to miss every step of the cell proliferation process, but you cannot sit in front of the culture table and observe the culture dishes or live animals all the time. You can't sit in front of a culture dish or live animal all the time, and you may miss a major discovery because you overlooked it.
4.Breakthrough of spatial and temporal limitations: Metacellular automata can visualize the abstract and lengthy cellular confrontation process in a concrete and short-term manner, breaking through the spatial and temporal limitations of traditional experiments and providing scientific and objective guidance for subsequent experiments.
5.Excellent simulation results: Metacellular automata simulation is intuitive and perfectly represents the dynamic proliferation process like never before!
6.The software interface is simple and friendly: most of the common parameters are set by the developer, so the user does not need to enter them manually one by one, but only needs to enter some of the variable and important parameters to perform the simulation quickly. For doubtful parameters, further inquiries and searches can be made by clicking into the NMU-China wiki.
What can users do with Metacellular Automata Simulation?
Visualized real-time dynamic simulations of cell-cell confrontation scenarios, such as CAR-NK92 versus tumor cells. Many factors are taken into account in the simulation, please click Metacellular Automata Parameters.