Cloud-COPASI is a web-based tool for running computationally intensive simulation and analysis tasks in parallel on a high-throughput computing pool. Cloud-COPASI can connect to existing computing pools, or provides a simple interface for launching a new computing pool using the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Cloud-COPASI can run a number of simulation and analysis tasks, including global sensitivity analyses, stochastic simulations, parameter scans, optimizations, and parameter fitting. Each task is automatically slit into a number of smaller jobs, which are executed in parallel, allowing for significant speed-ups in running time.
Models must be prepared using COPASI (COmplex PAthway SImulator), a widely used free, open-source, cross-platform simulation tool.
Cloud-COPASI is developed by Edward Kent in the Computational Systems Biology and Biochemical Networks Modeling Group at the University of Manchester, UK, and is built on the Condor-COPASI software. Cloud-COPASI is written in Python using the Django web application framework. Bosco is used to connect to remote compute pools, and HTCondor is used to manage job allocation on EC2 pools.