Markus Covert and Mycoplasma

Mike's Notes

In 2014, I read an article in Scientific American by Markus Covert at Stanford about the successful computer cellular simulation of mycoplasma. It was a fascinating article that made me think about PIPI and whether it could have been better built during 2005-2008.

When my wife and I left Christchurch in 2014 to start a new life, I became curious about modern cloud computing and read a great deal. Then, I realised that PIPI was a very early form of cloud computing, and many of its features were 10 years ahead of their time. What a waste!

By 2016, I was mad about missing the opportunity and decided to rebuild PIPI as a core platform from memory.

2017 to 2019, PIPI 6 was built by fusing the rebuilt core platform with Covert Lab's open-source cellular simulation software. This process was challenging and resulted in an unusual architecture. Every process was given a random probability, with many positive and negative feedback loops. It was like composing music. (In hindsight, synesthesia helped a lot.)

Resources

A Computational Whole-Cell Model Predicts Genotype From Phenotype

A 2013 talk by Markus Covert at the Qualcomm Institute.