A researcher describes building a virtual cell model that lets scientists test risky experiments computationally before touching the lab. The shift would flip research from 90% wet-lab work to 90% computational, de-risking hypotheses and accelerating discovery toward treatments that actually help people.
On the virtual cell model, we really believe that biology is going to be more creative and faster if you build an in silico cell that biologists can flip the ratio on. Right now it's 90% wet lab, 10% computational, and it's slow and it's hard and it makes people risk-averse. It's going to take so long to do that. I'm not going to test it unless I'm really convinced. If you can build an in silico model and flip the ratio, they're 90% computational, 10% wet lab.
So you want to make a cell model that is so rich. Yes. A virtual cell that I can run experiments on it, I can test molecules.
I can— Exactly. Okay. I want to be able to de-risk that, do that in silico so that in the wet lab I can just confirm it. That's gonna make science faster. That's gonna make people willing to test riskier ideas. And that is going to be something that accelerates a lot of science. It's gonna change the paradigm. It's actually gonna very directly impact human health.
