AUTHOR=De Vos Dirk , Dzhurakhalov Abdiravuf , Stijven Sean , Klosiewicz Przemyslaw , Beemster Gerrit T. S. , Broeckhove Jan 

TITLE=Virtual Plant Tissue: Building Blocks for Next-Generation Plant Growth Simulation

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=8

YEAR=2017

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2017.00686

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2017.00686

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Motivation:</bold> Computational modeling of plant developmental processes is becoming increasingly important. Cellular resolution plant tissue simulators have been developed, yet they are typically describing physiological processes in an isolated way, strongly delimited in space and time.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> With plant systems biology moving toward an integrative perspective on development we have built the Virtual Plant Tissue (VPTissue) package to couple functional modules or models in the same framework and across different frameworks. Multiple levels of model integration and coordination enable combining existing and new models from different sources, with diverse options in terms of input/output. Besides the core simulator the toolset also comprises a tissue editor for manipulating tissue geometry and cell, wall, and node attributes in an interactive manner. A parameter exploration tool is available to study parameter dependence of simulation results by distributing calculations over multiple systems.</p><p><bold>Availability:</bold> Virtual Plant Tissue is available as open source (EUPL license) on Bitbucket (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://bitbucket.org/vptissue/vptissue" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://bitbucket.org/vptissue/vptissue</ext-link>). The project has a website <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://vptissue.bitbucket.io" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://vptissue.bitbucket.io</ext-link>.</p>