COPASI Biology Software Package to be Open Source to IT Users

Developers of the COPASI systems biology software announced that the software which explains the working of biochemical networks will now feature an open source license that promises more benefits for users.

The software package known as Complex Pathway Simulator or COPASI was developed by an international collaboration between Virginia Bioinformatics Institute Professor Pedro Mendes’ research groups at Virginia Tech and the University of Manchester and Professor Ursula Kummer’s group at the University of Heidelberg.

This software allows people with less mathematics knowledge to also develop models and simulations of biochemical networks. COPASI supports the Systems Biology Markup Language or SBML standard for systems biology software. Researchers can use the computational tolls to examine how a system works by constructing biochemical models.

Advanced modelers leverage the features of COPASI as it incorporates sophisticated algorithms. It also has the ability to automatically adjust model parameters to replicate results obtained during experiments which helps validate the selected model, said official sources.

COPASI has always been available through an open source format for individual users. However the software’s new license agreement, which is approved by the Open Source (News - Alert) Initiative or OSI will allow commercial users to freely use the software. Also it was revealed that the new feature is included in the latest version 4.6.33 of the software.

Stefan Hoops, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute or VBI senior project manager and one of the technical leads of the project said, “Through our new Artistic License 2.0 licensing scheme, everyone will have the opportunity to download and use future versions of COPASI free of charge.”

“The new license is also compatible with more software libraries and other academic software programs, which will allow the development team to enhance the quality and functionality of COPASI,” Hoops added.

Hoops also said that third parties can develop and distribute software packages that use the program and it can also be included in other software bundles, like Linux distributions. Researchers can also integrate COPASI in their own software projects and freely distribute results.

According to the COPASI development team more improvements are being made to the software package in order to understand cellular and molecular behavior by facilitating the quantitative interpretation of modern experiments.

COPASI meets the real needs of life scientists offered in a powerful package that all biologists can use. The software development is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the German Ministry of Science, the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the British Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.