Figure 3.

Simulation pipeline for causally cohesive genotype–phenotype studies. Blue arrows denote functions that generate genotypes or transform them through successive mappings, genotype to parameter to “raw” phenotypes to aggregated phenotypes. The surrounding text exemplifies different alternatives for each piece of the pipeline, e.g., a simple mapping of variation at one locus to variation in one parameter, or a more mechanistic gene regulatory model. “Virtual experiments” interact with physiological models to generate phenotypes defined by the system’s response to external stimuli.