There are two ongoing projects that are developing a GENESIS-compatible replacement for the GENESIS core.
Neurospaces
Hugo Cornelis (Bower lab, UT San Antonio), who programmed many of the advanced features of the GENESIS hsolve object, is developing Neurospaces and its compartmental model solver Heccer. This promises to be extremely efficient for the solution of large compartmental neuron models. For more information about Neurospaces and Heccer, see http://www.neurospaces.org.
MOOSE
Upinder Bhalla (NCBS Bangalore), who wrote the X Windows XODUS GUI interface for GENESIS and did much of the initial GENESIS development, has been rewriting the GENESIS base code in C++, as MOOSE. This reimplementation in an object-oriented language makes it simple to "unbundle" the components of GENESIS.
The following outline summarizes MOOSE. More information may be found at http://moose.sourceforge.net/.
The Messaging Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) provides:
- Improved Messaging between GENESIS objects
- Faster, smaller, cleaner implementation
- Portability to MS Windows and non-UNIX platforms
- Improved equation solvers, with specialized solvers for biochemical
kinetics modeling - Ability to use multiple script parsers and user interfaces