Requirements for Documenting Electrical Cell Stimulation Experiments for Replicability and Numerical Modeling^∗.

Area of Science:

• Cell Biology
• Computational Biology
• Biophysics

Background:

• Reproducibility in biological experiments is essential, especially when integrating wet-lab data into computer simulations.
• Electrical stimulation of biological cells is an interdisciplinary field requiring documentation of both biological and physical parameters.
• Discrepancies between reported and simulated electrical quantities arise from incomplete documentation of electrical stimulation, hindering reproducibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To define a minimal set of information required for translating electrical stimulation experiments into computer simulations.
• To enhance the replicability of electrical stimulation experiments in cell biology.
• To propose integrating documentation standards into existing guidelines for cell biology experiments.

Main Methods:

• Identifying essential documentation components for electrical stimulation, including electronic devices, setup, and stimulus parameters.
• Proposing the integration of these documentation requirements into electronic lab notebooks.
• Demonstrating the relevance of the proposed documentation through two exemplary case studies.

Main Results:

• A minimal documentation set is proposed, encompassing details on electronic devices, setup, applied stimulus, and ideally, environmental properties.
• Electronic lab notebooks can facilitate the seamless integration of wet-lab data into simulations.
• The proposed documentation enhances the translation of experimental data for computational modeling and improves experimental reproducibility.

Conclusions:

• Standardized documentation of electrical stimulation is critical for accurate computational modeling and robust replication of cell biology experiments.
• Integrating proposed documentation standards into electronic lab notebooks will improve data integration and experimental reproducibility.
• The proposed guidelines offer a practical approach to bridge the gap between in vitro experiments and in silico modeling in cell biology.