“Go where the puck is going, not where the puck is.”- Wayne Gretzky

Like the handful of other “virtual cell” initiatives, the goal of Project CyberCell is to look beyond the current data collection phase of genomics and proteomics, toward their inevitable endpoints- simulating life on a computer. Our challenge is to anticipate where the science is moving so that we can position Canada on the ground floor of what is certain to be largest international effort of this century. The goal of Project CyberCell is to understand the dynamic and structural nature of cellular processes at a sufficiently quantitative level of chemical detail so that a living cell can be recreated computationally. The prospect of examining, controlling and predicting cell physiology In Silico would establish a revolutionary trend in agriculture, environmental research, medicine and biotechnology. It will result in smarter, faster and cheaper science, thereby accelerating the pace of discovery. It will expedite the rational design and screening of pharmaceuticals, agriceuticals and will eventually form the basis for logical strategies in environmental risk assessment. Ultimately, a concerted international effort to create the virtual cell will lay the foundation for the creation of other uni-cellular CyberOrganisms and ultimately, multi-cellular CyberOrganisms.

Physics in the 20th century set precedent with its repeated demonstration that, where theory and experiment were concerned, the whole was invariably greater than the sum of its parts. Project CyberCell will therefore strive to reunite theory and experiment within a biological framework, each tailored to the other in a symbiotic relationship, and inseparably bound together by the computer.

Project CyberCell will use the bacterium E. coli as its model, a simple uni-cellular organism that is unquestionably the best genetically and biochemically characterized organism in existence.

From the theoretical perspective, the long-range objectives of Project CyberCell are two-fold: 1) The development of a mathematical, molecular-based model of E. coli, with the flexibility to evolve and refine its predictive power by incorporating a range of empirically derived parameters. Ultimately, the most “life-like” rendering of the CyberCell will be one that can describe the complex physical interplay between biomolecules in terms of their chemical structures. 2) The development of a facile and accessible computational platform to visually examine and manipulate the simulated behaviour of the cell at hierarchical levels of chemical detail.

From the experimental perspective, the objectives are: 1) To fuel the theoretical component with systematically acquired and standardized data sets that describe a dynamic and complex biomolecular inventory in terms of their structure and function. 2) To perform the empirical tests of theoretical predictions that will be required to refine the model. This iterative process of prediction and testing is therefore the glue that binds theory to experiment. 3) To develop technology that will expedite the process of data collection and interpretation through improvements in speed, throughput and sensitivity: ultimately to the level of a single cell.

Project CyberCell has assembled a balanced and integrated nucleus of scientists that are among the best in Canada. The team is highly interdisciplinary and includes physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, bioinformaticians, biophysicists, chemists and biochemists. Most of these individuals already have ongoing collaborations with others in the group. While the centre of gravity for this project resides in Alberta, we have also recruited top-ranked individuals from across the nation and abroad. The project has also formed important partnerships with the private sector, national research facilities and other Genome Canada initiatives with interests that are complementary to our own.