I think this news is huge: I suspect they probably took a lot of shortcuts and aren't simulating everything at the level of individual atoms. However, this type of system could be refined and perhaps give a 99% accurate simulation of a cell.
Imagine if you could get the DNA from a cancer cell in a human patient, as well as the DNA of a normal cell, and then test the effect of a million different randomly-generated molecules until you find one that kills the cancer cell, but not the normal cell.
If you could scale the performance of this type of system and allow it to simulate Eukaryotic cells (much more difficult) it might let you cure most cancers!
Imagine if you could get the DNA from a cancer cell in a human patient, as well as the DNA of a normal cell, and then test the effect of a million different randomly-generated molecules until you find one that kills the cancer cell, but not the normal cell.
If you could scale the performance of this type of system and allow it to simulate Eukaryotic cells (much more difficult) it might let you cure most cancers!