LimbNET

LimbNET facilitates collaborative modelling, simulation, and visualisation of spatiotemporal patterning in limb development through an online framework for gene regulatory network (GRN) models.

Key Features:

• Gene Regulatory Network Simulation: Enables remote users to define and simulate arbitrary GRN models of 2D spatiotemporal developmental patterning processes.
• Model Database: Provides a database of previously created models that users can simulate, explore, and extend.
• Image-Driven Modelling: Maps spatiotemporally varying gene expression intensities derived from image-based data into a standardised computational description of limb growth.
• Data-Simulation Comparison: Enables direct comparison between datasets and between data and simulation outputs for parameter optimisation.

Scientific Applications:

• Limb Development Research: Supports testing and comparison of hypotheses within a common framework among experimental and theoretical researchers.
• Image-Driven Computational Modelling: Closes the feedback loop between experiments and simulation via parameter optimisation using image-based gene expression data.

Methodology:

Spatiotemporally varying gene expression intensities derived from image-based data are mapped into a standardised computational description of limb growth integrated within the modelling framework.