The Silicon Cell initiative: working towards a detailed kinetic description at the cellular level

The Silicon Cell initiative aims to understand cellular systems on the basis of the characteristics of their components. As a tool to achieve this, detailed kinetic models at the network reaction level are being constructed. Such detailed kinetic models are extremely useful for medical and biotechnological applications and form strong tools for fundamental studies. Several recently constructed detailed kinetic models on metabolism (glycolysis), signal transduction (EGF receptor), and the eukaryotic cell cycle (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) have been used to exemplify the Silicon Cell project. These models are stored and made accessible via the JWS Online Cellular Systems Modeling project, a web-based repository of kinetic models. Using a web-browser the models can be interrogated via a user-friendly graphical interface. The goal of the two projects is to combine models on parts of cellular systems and ultimately to construct detailed kinetic models at the cellular level.