Multiscale modeling of biological functions

Recent years have witnessed a tremendous explosion in computational power, which in turn has resulted in great progress in the complexity of the biological and chemical problems that can be addressed by means of all-atom simulations. Despite this, however, our computational time is not infinite, and in fact many of the key problems of the field were resolved long before the existence of the current levels of computational power. This review will start by presenting a brief historical overview of the use of multiscale simulations in biology, and then present some key developments in the field, highlighting several cases where the use of a physically sound simplification is clearly superior to a brute-force approach. Finally, some potential future directions will be discussed.