An Open Platform toward Large-Scale Multilevel Modeling and Simulation of Physiological Systems

An open platform for enhancing the integrative life science called Physiome and Systems Biology has been developing. The platform is currently open in the public domain at www.physiome.jp. The platform includes the following core technologies, 1) An integrated modeling environment on which users can build mathematical models of biological and physiological functions at multiple levels and multiple scales with hierarchical relationships among them. On the environment, users can also perform numerical simulations of the models, with parallel computing. 2) A language for describing wide variety of models of biological and physiological functions. It is capable of describing mathematical implementations of a model explicitly, hierarchical structured embedded in a model, relationships among a number of different models, and morphological information characterizing geometry of each model. 3) Databases for archiving and sharing mathematical models, morphometric data, and time-series data, for which data acquisitions are expected to be made by public efforts through biological, physiological, and computational experiments.