back to article Bio-boffins create world's first digital STD

A bacterium that in humans can cause genital pain, itching, and a burning sensation while urinating has become the subject of the first-ever complete software simulation of an entire organism, the New York Times reports. The simulation is the work of a team of boffins from Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute …

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  1. Why Not?
    Thumb Up

    Wow

    The program that might cure cancer's first experience was a dose of clap!

    Really good news, long term this might solve the worlds health problems.

  2. Boyd Crow

    Now for the apps

    Cool. Will this become the next Tamagotchi pet?

  3. Denarius
    Thumb Up

    serious coding

    now how does one know if the coding is correct ? Even if it is only 80% right, still a laudable achievement.

    1. Christian Berger

      Actually...

      It's probably fairly simple code. After all this works at at an atomic level. They might have taken an "off the shelf" chemical simulator.

  4. Mike Hocker

    some assembly required

    "You don't really understand how something works until you can reproduce it yourself,"

    Actually, reverse engineer it yourself. Sort of. Except they don't understand now all the little pieces work, or the cell wall all that well, and sort of ignored the information in the intracellular space, and.... but still, what was done is more than existed before.

    Better than the syntho life wankers who completely ignore the cell wall as being trivial and immutable, you know, of the same ilk that claimed that the "junk" DNA never does anything.

    Anyone who has done any firmware knows that it is that little piece you don't understand that will always byte you in the arse, or in their case, a chomp in a pubic place.

  5. Allan George Dyer
    Thumb Up

    "You don't really understand how something works until you can reproduce it yourself," and maybe not even then... most organisms, including most humans, reproduce without understanding, but with more work like this we'll get there in the end.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In late-breaking news

    Due to a misunderstanding by a programmer at McAfee, all copies of this program and results were inadvertently deleted following an automatic upgrade.

  7. The Axe

    Models? Pfft

    Just creating a model of something doesn't prove that you've got it right. You need to do a lot of experiments to fine tune the model to make it match reality. Many models are too simplistic and don't take into account sometimes very minor details. A bit like the climate models which are all saying that the end of the world is nigh, but ever since 1998 reality has refused to stay in step with the models.

    1. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: Models? Pfft

      True, but this is still a great accomplishment. A simple biological entity is probably much, MUCH more complex than the world's climate. I have considerable experience in computational biology, and the complexity is simply staggering.

      1. BlueGreen

        Re: Models? Pfft

        @The Axe

        Nice to know we've got a real modelling expert. Obliged to irrelevantly extend his opinion to climate change as well, hallmark of a true polymath.

        @Filippo

        leaning in under the shadow of the true master here, I wonder if climate & biological simulations are in any way comparable. Climate has potential feedback loops that may cause it to be unstable and we've only got one, living things must alway move to internally stable states or they'd simply be unable to live, plus we've got lots and we can observe as many as we'd like (ie. we have a lot more certainty about how they actually behave).

    2. Eddie Edwards

      Pfft? Pfft

      You seem to be misunderstanding the meaning of the term "model". A model does not match reality, by definition. If it did, it wouldn't be a model. Models omit minor details on purpose, not by accident. For instance, I can navigate from my house to Edinburgh using a model of the country called a road map, despite its omission of every blade of grass on the journey. The required resolution of the model is implied by its usage. The same road map would be useless if I wanted to build a 3D model of the road from my house to Edinburgh down to the individual curves and drains and white lines (although I could invent much of that data, and the model would still be useful for gaming).

      So what's missing from this story is the purpose of this model; without knowing that (and it doesn't seem to have one) it's hard to say whether they've done a good job of building it or not. But one might posit that the main use for such a model would be to determine exactly which minor details they now need to add to get a reasonable approximation of the real cell (for some given purpose ...)

  8. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    DAT COMPLEXITY!

    ...even after having dropped the whole layer of quantum mechanical effects which are bound to play a role in edge cases.

    Nice.

  9. TopDog64

    TopDog

    Will my computers anti-virus work to protect it from this infection?

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Peter Murphy
    Coat

    Why does it hurt when I pee?

    Why does it hurt when I pee?

    Downloaded it from Stanford University

    Why does it hurt when I pee?

    1. Anomalous Cowturd
      Happy

      Re: Why does it hurt when I pee?

      Oh God!

      I probably got the, gonococococcus. Twang.

      I got it from the toilet seat...

      With apologies to the late, great, Frank Zappa.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gives a whole new meaning to

    Blue Scream of Death.

    AC/DC

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