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The GENESIS simulation platform was one of the first broad-scale modeling systems in computational biology to encourage modelers to develop and share model features and components. Supported by a large developer community, it participated in innovative simulator technologies such as benchmarking, parallelization, and declarative model specification and was the first neural simulator to define bindings for the Python scripting language. An important feature of the latest version of GENESIS is that it decomposes into self-contained software components complying with the Computational Biology Initiative federated software architecture. This architecture allows separate scripting bindings to be defined for different necessary components of the simulator, e.g., the mathematical solvers and graphical user interface. Python is a scripting language that provides rich sets of freely available open source libraries. With clean dynamic object-oriented designs, they produce highly readable code and are widely employed in specialized areas of software component integration. We employ a simplified wrapper and interface generator to examine an application programming interface and make it available to a given scripting language. This allows independent software components to be 'glued' together and connected to external libraries and applications from user-defined Python or Perl scripts. We illustrate our approach with three examples of Python scripting. (1) Generate and run a simple single-compartment model neuron connected to a stand-alone mathematical solver. (2) Interface a mathematical solver with GENESIS 3.0 to explore a neuron morphology from either an interactive command-line or graphical user interface. (3) Apply scripting bindings to connect the GENESIS 3.0 simulator to external graphical libraries and an open source three dimensional content creation suite that supports visualization of models based on electron microscopy and their conversion to computational models. Employed in this way, the stand-alone software components of the GENESIS 3.0 simulator provide a framework for progressive federated software development in computational neuroscience.
Pubmed ID: 22276101 RIS Download
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The GEneral NEural SImulation System (GENESIS) started as a very advanced software package in the late eighties, for biologically accurate neuronal modeling. Besides being used as a neuronal simulator, it was also applied to various domains outside computational neuroscience. The Neurospaces project is a departure from the monolithic software system design of the original GENESIS system. It is a development center for software components of computational neuroscience simulators. There are many advantages of developing independent software components: - Interfacing to an individual component is obviously more simple than interfacing to a do-all monolithic system. The compartmental solver developed for the Neurospaces project can be connected to Matlab fi. - It simplifies the individual components and encourages other developers to get involved. - It allows for separate testing of the components. More than 1000 use case tests been defined for these software components, including integration tests. - Integrating different component, gives different flavours of the same simulator, and enhances the user experienced consistency when doing multilevel simulations. - A component based software system avoids vendor-lockin. Its life-cycle is more smooth than that of a monolithic system, because software components can be upgraded one at a time. The Neurospaces project embodies many software components that all have been developed in full isolation. The core of the most important components is finished. The current development focus has shifted from component integration to the support of specific use case with an emphasis on single neuron modeling. This is a list of software components that have been developed or are under construction. Together, these tools give the core for the upcoming GENESIS 3 GUI. - GShell: a simple replacement for the Genesis 2 SLI. - Heccer: a fast compartmental solver, a backend. - Dash: a second compartmental solver faster than Heccer, for simpler models. - Neurospaces Model Container: provides a solver independent internal and external storage format for models. - Discrete event system: consists of a discrete event distributor and queuer. This is used for abstract modeling of an action potential traveling inside an axon as a ''discrete event''. - SSP: a flexible scheduler written in perl, to run simulations with the Neurospaces model container and Heccer. - The Neurospaces Studio: some tools for graphical browsing and command line usage. - The Genesis Script Language Interface: a scripting component that reads Genesis 2 scripts and feeds them to the Neurospaces model container. - The Geometry Library is a general purpose geometry library, with some essential geometrical operators, not commonly found in other geometrical libraries. - Using the Geometry Library, a Reconstruct Interface has been written. This interface supports the conversion of contours exported by the Reconstruct software to the Neurospaces declarative NDF format. - The Neurospaces project browser for browsing projects and inspecting simulation results. - The Installer package contains the Neurospaces installer and developer tools that have emerged from developing Neurospaces software components. - The Configurator package contains configuration utilities for the other tools. It is not needed for the other tools to work properly. Rather, it allows to set up model database and simulation servers in a convenient way. - There is also a Neurospaces blog and a wiki at googlecode for the Neurospaces project, with information for developers.
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View all literature mentionsStudy to surveyed structures of protein-protein interfaces in PDB to carry out structural comparisons of interfaces. Structural comparisons of protein-protein interfaces.
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