Modeling Biology with SimBiology: An Introduction for iGEM Teams

Mathematical modeling is an indispensable component of synthetic biology, and the iGEM competition. Modeling and simulation enables synthetic biologists to test the feasibility of their designs prior to fabrication, thus cutting down on trial and error. Every year, iGEM teams successfully use modeling as a tool to guide and optimize the design of their genetic assemblies.

In this webinar, we will introduce iGEM teams to SimBiology, a MATLAB-based tool for modeling, simulating and analyzing biological systems. Using an example from synthetic biology, we will demonstrate key features, including:

• Graphical modeling environment
• Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and stochastic solvers
• Sensitivity analysis and parameter sweeps techniques
• Parameter estimation techniques
• Advanced analysis via custom analysis tasks written in MATLAB

About the Presenter: Asawari Samant is an Application Engineer at the MathWorks. She has a B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering. At MathWorks, she primarily supports the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and the computational biology sector.