Soft Cell

For over a hundred years scientists have tried to pin down life as it carries on regardless; to formalise its hidden rules using maths, or using increasingly powerful computers to simulate the volatile, complex, seemingly random events in cells, organs and ecosystems. Past efforts focus on smaller parts of the whole – models of signalling inside cells, or processes like cell division. But here scientists bring some of the pieces together, using computer models to simulate a simplified bacterial cell. Pictured after replicating its DNA, the virtual bacterium separates its 'mother' chromosome (green) from the two new 'daughter' chromosomes, partitioned into different areas of the cell by specific proteins, ready for the cell to divide. Simulating such 'simple' life is a step towards models of more complex mammalian cells, in health and disease.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video from work by Zane R. Thornburg and Andrew Maytin, and colleagues
• Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; NSF Science and Technology Center for Quantitative Cell Biology, Urbana, IL, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Cell, March 2026