This Could Be the First Animal to Live Entirely Inside a Computer

This Could Be the First Animal to Live Entirely Inside a Computer: "Our project is to simulate as much of the important physics — or biophysics — of the C. elegans as we can, and then compare against measurements from real worms. When we say simulation, we are specifically referring to writing computer programs that use equations from physics that are applied to what we know about the worm..."

"We are currently addressing the challenge of closing the 'brain-behavior loop' in C. elegans," he says. "In other words, through this simulation we want to understand how its proto-brain controls its muscles to move its body around an environment, and then how the environment is interpreted by the proto-brain. That means leaving aside reproduction or digestion or other internal functions for now until that first part is complete. Once we get there, we will move on to these other aspects.