Using High Performance Computing to Model Cellular Embryogenesis

C. elegans is a primitive multicellular organism (worm) that shares many important biological characteristics that arise as complications within human beings. [1] It begins as a single cell and then undergoes a complex embryogenesis to form a complete animal. Using experimental data, the early stages of life of the cells are simulated by computers. The goal of this project is to use this simulation to compare the embryogenesis stage of C. elegans cells with that of human cells. Since the simulation involves the manipulation of many files and large amounts of data, the power provided by supercomputers and parallel programming is required.