HACKER Q&A
📣 miguelrochefort

Are there any projects that attempt to simulate the human body?


It doesn't need to have anything close to cellular precision. I know how hard it is to simulate even just a few million neurons and synapse. I'm looking for something that simulates high-level processes that can be found in medical research papers. Even a crude weight loss simulator given calories, physiological traits and exercise level buckets would qualify.

Non-human simulations, like mice, worms, flies, yeast, might also qualify if they can be adapted to humans.


  👤 ksaj Accepted Answer ✓
Have you seen the language NetLogo? It comes with a lot of artificial life (alife) examples that may pique your interest. https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

It is an adapted version of the Logo language, but greatly enhanced for mathematical visualization. It's a bit Lispy (without all the parens), so the language is pretty much instantly understandable, even if you've never coded before. The download includes both a 2D (very quick) and 3D (slower, but quite amazing) versions. And it is free, since it was written purely for educational purposes.

Most of the examples are very high level (eg: flocking algorithms) or very low level (chemical interactions at the molecular level). You'll probably enjoy the RNA/DNA simulations, and the very detailed simulations of cellular functions such as reproduction and protein synthesis.


👤 helph67
You may be surprised to know that genetically mice are not very different to humans... https://www.genome.gov/10001345/importance-of-mouse-genome