ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Estimating computational limits on theoretical descriptions of biological cells.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- En route for molecular dynamics simulation of a living cell.Fundamental research · 2025Review
- Should Artificial Intelligence Play a Durable Role in Biomedical Research and Practice?International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Limits and Prospects of Molecular Fingerprinting for Phenotyping Biological Systems Revealed throughAnalytical chemistry · 2023Article
- Understanding How Cells Probe the World: A Preliminary Step towards Modeling Cell Behavior?International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Biology and medicine in the landscape of quantum advantages.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Review
- Is There a Need for a More Precise Description of Biomolecule Interactions to Understand Cell Function?Current issues in molecular biology · 2022Review
- Mechanotransduction as a major driver of cell behaviour: mechanisms, and relevance to cell organization and future research.Open biology · 2021Review
- Life in silico: Are we close yet?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There has been much success recently in theoretically simulating parts of complex biological systems on the molecular level, with the goal of first-principles modeling of whole cells. However, there is the question of whether such simulations can be performed because of the enormous complexity of cells. We establish approximate equations to estimate computation times required to simulate highly simplified models of cells by either molecular dynamics calculations or by solving molecular kinetic equations. Our equations place limits on the complexity of cells that can be theoretically understood with these two methods and provide a first step in developing what can be considered biological uncertainty relations for molecular models of cells. While a molecular kinetics description of the genetically simplest bacterial cell may indeed soon be possible, neither theoretical description for a multicellular system, such as the human brain, will be possible for many decades and may never be possible even with quantum computing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.