Agent-based model in biology

Agent-based models have many applications in biology, primarily due to the characteristics of the modeling method. Agent-based modeling is a rule-based, computational modeling methodology that focuses on rules and interactions among the individual components or the agents of the matrix .^[1] The goal of this modeling method is to generate populations of the system components of interest and simulate their interactions in a virtual world. Agent-based models start with rules for behavior and seek to reconstruct, through computational instantiation of those behavioral rules, the observed patterns of behavior.^[1]