Parallel Stochastic Discrete Event Simulation of Calcium Dynamics in Neuron

作者：Patoary, Mohammad Nazrul Ishlam; Tropper, Carl^*; McDougal, Robert A.; Lin, Zhongwei; Lytton, William W.

来源：IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 2019, 16(3): 1007-1019.

DOI：10.1109/TCBB.2017.2756930

• PDES
• NSM
• NTW
• discrete event calcium wave model
• parallel stochastic discrete event simulation

The intra-cellular calcium signaling pathways of a neuron depends on both biochemical reactions and diffusions. Some quasi-isolated compartments (e.g., spines) are so small and calcium concentrations are so low that one extra molecule diffusing in by chance can make a nontrivial difference in concentration (percentage-wise). These rare events can affect dynamics discretely in such a way that they cannot be evaluated by a deterministic and continuous simulation. Stochastic models of such a system provide a more detailed understanding of these systems than existing deterministic models because they capture their behavior at a molecular level. Our research focuses on the development of a high performance parallel discrete event simulation environment, Neuron Time Warp (NTW), which is intended for use in the parallel simulation of stochastic reaction-diffusion systems such as intra-calcium signaling. NTW is integrated with NEURON, a simulator which is widely used within the neuroscience community. We simulate two models, a calcium buffer and a calcium wave model. The calcium buffer model is employed in order to verify the correctness and performance of NTW by comparing it to a sequential deterministic simulation in NEURON. We also derived a discrete event calcium wave model from a deterministic model using the stochastic IP3R structure.

• 出版日期2019-6
• 单位中国人民解放军国防科学技术大学; McGill