In silico

Using in silico (based on Latin in silico for in silicon ) refers to processes that occur in the computer. The term is an allusion to the fact that most of today's computer chips are manufactured on the basis of the chemical element silicon ( see also wafer).

General

The term originated in the field of bioinformatics, which provides a computer support for the elucidation of biochemical processes in living organisms, especially the body cells of the organs of man. The classic explanation of events takes place in the cells by an experiment - it is called in vivo observations in the full life- efficient organism called during in vitro observation of sub-processes in the test tube. Computer- aided simulation of biochemical processes associated experiments can now be triggered in the computer, and the calculated results as other experimental observations are handled - this is called an experiment "in silico".

In general, experimental results must be subjected to each of increased testing. For an eye-catching biochemical process in the computer ( in silico ) a laboratory experiment must be used, which also shows the process in order not cause inaccuracies in the model to wrong assumptions for further research. Similarly, the performed laboratory experiments must be checked ( in vitro), as a natural organism responds to an initiated biochemical process, and it comes to interaction with other active biochemical processes, so the actual effect in animals (in vivo) may be different than in was observed the simplified environmental conditions of the laboratory.

Conceptual history

The term in silico is not Latin. The neologism originated in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, where he was 1989/1990 used multiple times at conferences of genome research, to describe the computer experiments that take place in parallel with the in vitro and in vivo experiments. Here you can see an adaptation of the used silicon computer chips, which silicone is called in the English language and in the American Southwest also the namesake for the Silicon Valley ( " Silicon Valley " ) is the main location of the computer industry worldwide. So there is a direct association of " silicone" into computers, through the approximation of the speaker end ( rhyme education) with in vivo and in vitro was so presumably in silico. The term became established quickly, the first written testimony can be found in 1990 Hans B. Sieburg in the transcripts of the Sommerkolloqiums to complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. , And 1991 in a checked item of a French team in an international journal. The early 1990s was temporarily even tried to introduce a correct Latin equivalent " in silico ", but this could not prevail. In the white papers of the European Community for Genome Research the technical term dips below on a regular basis.