Overview
- The University of Illinois–led team simulated nearly every modeled chemical reaction and molecular movement across one complete cell cycle of the minimal bacterium JCVI-syn3A.
- A full 105-minute cycle ran in six days on the Delta supercomputer after dedicating one GPU to chromosome replication and another to remaining cellular dynamics.
- Repeated runs matched real-cell division timing on average within about two minutes, indicating strong agreement with experimental measurements.
- The spatial, time-resolved model recapitulated emergent behaviors such as swelling, elongation and symmetric division, supported by datasets from collaborators at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital.
- Deliberate simplifications constrained scope yet enabled tractability, including treating unknown-gene products as inert spheres and allowing one ribosome per mRNA, positioning the platform as a predictive research tool rather than an atomistic replica.