ABSTRACT
One of the advantages of ABMs lies in the fact that the interactions of agents are derived from fundamental occurrences in biological processes, like the binding of receptors, and as such, they are more intuitive and easier to understand. Additionally, the instructions that describe the interactions are taken from published literature and translated into programming language [62]. One direct consequence of this approach is that the resulting dynamics can be read in analogy with experimental reality in a straightforward way. Cell counts are cell counts. The number of infected cells is just so. Occasionally, a cell’s fate can be traced individually and milieus that are nowhere to be found in meanfi eld approximations can be discovered. This allows following
long-ranging effects, either in time or in space, by tracing small local perturbations.
