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Mitosis Lab — Vision

The problem

"Simulations" on the web are usually generic particle systems: dots that attract, repel, and swirl with no meaning behind them. They look busy but say nothing. At the same time, the one place a branching, growing structure genuinely means something — biology's cell lineage — is normally locked inside static textbook diagrams or heavyweight research tools. There's no fun, tactile way to play with the process and feel how the rules produce the tree.

The core idea

Mitosis Lab makes one real biological process interactive:

  1. A single seed cell exists at time zero.
  2. Each cell divides after a stochastic interval — timing drawn from a mean with jitter, because real cells don't divide on a metronome.
  3. On division, each daughter inherits a mutated copy of its mother's genome (hue, size, division bias). Traits drift, so mutations form visible lineages.
  4. Run it forward and a lineage tree grows — the exact structure biologists use to trace ancestry — and you watch it branch live.

The knobs (mutation rate, mean division interval, timing jitter, population cap) let you see cause and effect: crank mutation and the tree turns into a riot of colour lineages; tighten jitter and divisions march in synchronised waves.

Who it's for

  • Curious people who like generative/simulation toys and want one with real depth.
  • Students and educators who want an intuition pump for stochastic division and heredity that beats a static diagram.
  • Portfolio viewers who should immediately read "this person models real systems with taste," not "another bouncing-balls demo."

Key design decisions

  • Pure simulation core, separate from rendering. src/sim/ is deterministic and fully unit-tested; the Canvas layer only draws. Correct biology is provable without a browser.
  • Seeded determinism. Every run is a pure function of (seed, params); the seed lives in the URL so a striking run can be shared exactly.
  • Canvas over SVG. A lineage can reach hundreds of nodes; an immediate-mode Canvas renderer at devicePixelRatio keeps it at 60fps where SVG would choke.
  • Real biology, honestly bounded. We model stochastic timing and trait inheritance faithfully, but cap population and abstract away metabolism — the goal is an intuition pump, not a research-grade model, and we say so.
  • Static, self-contained, relative paths. Builds to one dist/ directory with no server, hostable under any base path.

The wow moment

Press play on a single dim cell and watch it bloom into a living, branching lineage tree — nodes popping into being with a soft synth blip, branches sweeping outward, mutation-coloured sub-lineages fanning across the canvas — all in real time, all reshaping the instant you drag a slider.

What "v1 done" looks like

  • A seed cell grows into a smoothly-animated radial lineage tree at 60fps.
  • Sliders for mutation rate, mean division interval, jitter, and max population visibly and immediately change the tree.
  • Play / pause / step / reset and a speed control all work.
  • A seed field makes runs reproducible and is reflected in the URL for sharing.
  • Live readouts (population, generation, divisions, mutations) update like a lab instrument.
  • Synth SFX on division with a persistent mute toggle; prefers-reduced-motion respected.
  • The page follows docs/DESIGN.md end to end: fills the viewport, styled controls, favicon, designed win/empty states — passes the design ship gate.
  • CI green (typecheck + tests + build); deployable to apps.charliekrug.com/mitosis-lab.