Scientists have recreated a living organism in a computer model
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The simplest microorganism that causes sexually transmitted infections has become the world's first biological organism, the functioning of which was simulated to the smallest detail on a computer. The computer model of life is the first really working digital model, simulating a full cycle of chemical-biological reactions of a living organism from birth to death.
Scientists say that the microorganism Mycoplasma genitalium is a good candidate for reproduction "in the figure", since its genome contains only 525 genes. For comparison, the human genome contains more than 20 500 genes.
The authors of the experiment say that creating a digital analogue of a real bacterium opens the boundaries for science that are difficult to overestimate. In the future, researchers will be able to create much more complex organisms, simulating their activity on computers. It also allows to generate in a completely digital form virtual models of organisms, to experiment with them and to explore them.
Marcus Covert, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, says that such organisms, modeled on computers, allow scientists in real time to exchange their data and conduct joint research, being in different parts of the planet. "In the future, using this technique, we can understand, for example, how many genes provoke cancerous tumors, and also better understand how to deal with some incurable diseases today." It is now clear that diseases such as cancer are not limited to one genome, simulating the activity of genes on the computer, we will understand the essence of the disease much better, "he says.
According to Covert, to create an organism model, scientists used more than 900 data sources about Mycoplasma genitalium, so that the model 100% accurately reflected the work of the real organism. The created model completely reproduces all the cellular processes that exist in the present bacterium. Recall that the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium is a unicellular organism, whose work causes people such diseases as inflammation of the urinary system in men or cervical cancer in women.
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