Novel approaches to the visualization and quantification of biological simulations by emulating experimental techniques

Abstract

The use of modeling and simulation as a predictive tool for research in biology is becoming increasingly popular. However, outputs from such simulations are often abstract and presented in a very different manner to equivalent data from the biological domain. Therefore, we have developed a flexible tool-chain for emulating various biological laboratory techniques to produce biologically homomorphic outputs in computer simulations. This includes virtual immunohistochemistry, microscopy, flow cytometry, and gene expression heatmaps. We present a case study in the use of this tool-chain applied to a simulation of pre-natal lymphoid organ development. We find that application of the tool-chain provides additional, biologically relevant data, that is inaccessible with pre-existing methodologies for analysis of simulation results. We argue that biological experimental techniques borrowed from the wet-lab are an important additional approach to the analysis of simulations in computational biology, and might furthermore inspire confidence in simulation results from the perspective of experimental biologists.