A computer simulation program (CELLSIM) is described. The simple language and principles and the flexibility of the program allow biologists to simulate a variety of kinetic behaviours of growing cell populations. The program was evaluated on data obtained from a cultured human lymphoid cell line. Parameters assessed by the model gave values which were almost identical to those determined experimentally.
In the field of cell cycle kinetics there have been a number of computer simulation models that have been developed and reported in the literature (I, 13,16). However, this valuable tool is often not applied in this area because of two basic problems :
(1) The cell biologists who are engaged in cell kinetics research usually do not have the computer background required to develop these programs. Thus, in most cases, if they desire to use computer simulation, they must communicate their models to a computer programmer, who usually does not have a biological background.
(2) Because most cell models assume rapid cell proliferation, a large amount of computer memory is required to store the information on the ever-increasing number of cells in the models. The alternative is to only simulate a short time frame, and this reduces the usefulness of the model. This paper describes a cell kinetics simulation system which is intended to solve these problems. The user interfaces to the system through a simple problem-orientated language which uses the conventions and the vocabulary commonto the ceil biologist. Therefore, a cell biologist should be able to develop his own computer simulation models after very little instruction. An added dividend to the use of this language is that the assumptions and the logic of the model are apparent to other researchers