COPASI--a COmplex PAthway SImulator.

Simulation and modeling is becoming a standard approach to understand complex biochemical processes. Therefore, there is a big need for software tools that allow access to diverse simulation and modeling methods as well as support for the usage of these methods. Here, we present COPASI, a platform-independent and user-friendly biochemical simulator that offers several unique features. We discuss numerical issues with these features; in particular, the criteria to switch between stochastic and deterministic simulation methods, hybrid deterministic-stochastic methods, and the importance of random number generator numerical resolution in stochastic simulation. The complete software is available in binary (executable) for MS Windows, OS X, Linux (Intel) and Sun Solaris (SPARC), as well as the full source code under an open source license from http://www.copasi.org.