Chemesis Download Page

Chemesis2.1 is now available for the Unix operating systems. It can be compiled on any unix OS that has GENESIS (I hope:). It's been tested on Solaris 2.6, Redhat 7.0, Redhat 7.2, Redhat 8.0, Fedora core 2 and 3, and IRIX 6.4).

To download click here. After downloading, editing the makefile for your OS, then type make.

Computationally efficient, stochastic diffusion algorithm. C program used to generate figures in Blackwell 2006 J Neuroscience Methods. It runs under unix, and probably also under windows (no graphical interface).

To download click here. Compilation instructions are in the first line of diftest*.c. An output file is provided for verification. To change compartment size or diffusion coefficient, edit parameters in diff*.c and re-compile. We are currently working on an integrated reaction-diffusion program, with xml based model specification.

How do I use the chemesis software?

An explanation of how to use chemesis is in Neuroscience Databases: A Practical Guide, Ed. R. Kotter. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA (2002). The chapter is called Modeling the dynamics of second messenger pathways by Blackwell K.T. and Hellgren Kotaleski J. PDF file
Tutorial (in PowerPoint) on modeling calcium dynamics and second messenger pathways. The first part presents the theory; the second part explains Chemesis, Kinetikit, and Genesis objects to implement the such models:
Tutorial (with more words) published in Brains, Minds, Media, BMM 224
Scripts implementing second messenger reactions and calcium dynamic models illustrated in presentation. The second messenger reactions are implemented in XPPAUT, Kinetikit, and Chemesis; the calcium dynamics are solely in Chemesis.

What else can you do with the chemesis software?

Genesis simulation illustrating Donnan Equilibrium. This simulation uses Chemesis objects to help explain Figure 2.2 in Foundations of Cellular Neurophysiology by Johnston and Wu, MIT Press. The graphical interface allows students to explore the effects of concentration changes.
Chemesis scripts used for simulations in "Paired Turbulence and Light do not Produce a Supralinear Calcium Increase in Hermissenda." J Computational Neuroscience 2004 Jul-Aug;17(1):79-97
GENESIS scripts used for simulations in "Using potassium currents to solve signal-to-noise problems in inhibitory feedforward networks of the striatum." J Neurophysiology 2006 95: 331-41
Chemesis scripts used for simulations in "Ionic currents underlying difference in light response between type A and type B photoreceptors." J Neurophysiology 2006 95: 3060-3072

This software was developed under the generous support of the National Institute of Mental Health under Grant No. K21-MH01141 and the National Science Foundation under Grant IBN 0077509.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

06/2007 - Avrama Blackwell

since July 18, 2005