>>12105569They can currently model cellular structures.
https://youtu.be/5JcFgj2gHx8But I'd think the real challenge would be simulating an organism in a way that it interacted with it's environment as a dynamic whole, because the environment is so complex to simulate.
Take algae for example. In nature you'd always find them near other microorganisms, with various proteins, pH levels, other dissolved chemicals, varying heat, light, etc. To simulate anything interesting about a single algae, I'd think you'd have to simulate a fuck ton of other stuff for even a very simple ecosystem. Alternately, it's by comparison "easier" for astronomers to simulate stuff like how water and other molecules clumps together in space to form precursors to planets, but this is still really hard to simulate. And it's not like space dust involves 2nd and 3rd order protein effects like in cells.
This is a slight change of topic, but you might find neuro research on Aplysia sea slugs interesting because scientists isolated the mechanisms of learning and memory at the level of cellular substructures and developed ways of simulating them.
