Technology Focus; Speaking the cell's language in XML

While the Linux computer operating system is available for free to developers, companies such as Red Hat Inc. (RHAT, Durham, N.C.) aim to make money by providing commercial-grade software and support for the system. In a similar fashion, Physiome Sciences Inc. hopes that widespread use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) computer language will lead to use of its In Silico Cell modeling system.

While Physiome already had developed computer-based models of single organs such as the heart, the company concluded that even more useful would be a single computational platform that could be applied to multiple models created by researchers worldwide. The utility of such platforms is only likely to grow as companies look to simulate vast amounts of post-genomic data on a computer before doing traditional experiments, according to Chairman and CEO Jeremy Levin...