The future of whole-cell modeling

• Whole-cell models have the potential to impact science, bioengineering, and medicine.
• We highlight seven challenges in whole-cell modeling.
• We hope an interdisciplinary community will form to address these challenges.

Integrated whole-cell modeling is poised to make a dramatic impact on molecular and systems biology, bioengineering, and medicine — once certain obstacles are overcome. From our group's experience building a whole-cell model of Mycoplasma genitalium, we identified several significant challenges to building models of more complex cells. Here we review and discuss these challenges in seven areas: first, experimental interrogation; second, data curation; third, model building and integration; fourth, accelerated computation; fifth, analysis and visualization; sixth, model validation; and seventh, collaboration and community development. Surmounting these challenges will require the cooperation of an interdisciplinary group of researchers to create increasingly sophisticated whole-cell models and make data, models, and simulations more accessible to the wider community.

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