Within three years, Noble expects to have these problems ironed out and a virtual heart, lungs and circulation working together. The brain is just too complex to contemplate, he says. Modelling the remainder of the body is conceivable, but it would take a major international effort. The saving grace, Noble says, is that once you've modelled one organ, others become that much easier to do. Last year, Denis Noble of Oxford University and his student Frederick Ch'en used one of their mathematical cells to take a closer look at the chemistry behind heart attacks.
Most heart attacks happen when one of the arteries feeding the heart with blood becomes blocked.
The muscle cells fed by the artery can be starved of oxygen and other essentials. This turns them acidic, and if the trauma doesn't kill them, they begin beating furiously on their own. The pulses from this extra transmitter can disrupt the orderly progress of the wave of contraction round the heart. After calcium rushes into a cell and triggers a contraction, this pump drives calcium ions back out of the cell in exchange for sodium ions. But under acidic conditions, this pump works too well.