40 years without turning your back on a project... probably "heroic" is one of the words describing it.

I suppose the biggest "bottleneck" in the progress of such work is testing.

What is the current state of computer simulations of bio systems? Is OpenWorm the biggest project in this direction? If I remember correctly, they weren't exactly simulating completely down to the cellular organelle (or atomic) level, but instead simulated starting from higher level of abstraction (muscle contraction etc.).