Hacker News Reader

> Imagine being able to run your own experiments on a simulation first without having to buy and breed your own worms. So many more experiments can be carried out, and in parallel too.

I'm trying to better understand the significance of the project. Can you explain this more? Wouldn't running experiments require similar level detail simulators for whatever you are trying to test?

View on HN

Usually when you do a genetic experiment, you have a model of how things work in your head, then you do the experiment and test that model on living organisms.

It's entirely possible that your model is way off and you get results that don't mean anything. With computational models, we can test hypotheses (the models in our heads) much faster (don't have to wait for the worms to grow up) and much cheaper (we can do it on the computers all of us already own).

Gotcha, makes sense. Very cool, thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com