Fabian Theis attributed the lack of earlier momentum in virtual-cell research to relatively simplistic datasets and research questions.

“And even nowadays, many of these sort of pseudo-linear type of things are still doing a good job. But the reason for that being that I think the datasets and the questions that we asked on top were just sort of still on the simplistic side.”

“That's why also sort of it didn't yet take up. So whenever people talk about virtual cells, maybe also your question, I think what you actually ask is how does-- can you predict how a cell would behave under all kind of perturbations?”