Patent ID: 7319945

Claim:
An automated method for simulating a developmental process of an organism, said method comprising: a) receiving initial condition values and process parameters for the developmental process of the organism; b) representing the organism or a tissue within the organism by a graph data structure, wherein the graph data structure comprises: i) a list of links, each link representing the interaction between two cells; ii) a lineage tree recording the family tree of cell birth for the cells represented by the list of links; and iii) a list of nodes, each node representing a cell of the cells represented by the list of links, with an embedding describing the location of the cell in Cartesian coordinates and a set of differential equations describing the time evolution of the location of the cell, said differential equations comprising the initial condition values and process parameters, each node comprising a model that comprises a system of differential equations and associated parameters describing the developmental process; and c) repeatedly solving the set of differential equations in a series of steps for a defined number of steps, wherein after each step results are generated and compared to a threshold to determine whether the developmental process has reached a trigger point for changing the number of nodes in the list of nodes, thereby simulating the developmental process, wherein the developmental process is cell division, and wherein reaching the trigger point adds a new node to the list of nodes.