Modeling the human body in Rust so I can cmd+click through it
I started this trying to understand two things: why my Asian friends turn red after drinking, and why several friends all seemed to have migraine clusters. I was reading medical papers and textbooks, but kept getting lost jumping between topics. I thought: what if I could just Cmd+Click through this like code? What if "ALDH2 gene" was actually clickable, and took me to the variant, the phenotype, the population frequencies? So I started modeling human biology in Rust with my Ralph agent (Claude in a loop, ty ghuntley). Turns out the type system is perfect for this. Every biological entity is…
In plain words
This project models human biology in Rust, enabling interactive exploration of medical concepts through clickable links between genes, variants, phenotypes, and population data. Built for anyone trying to understand how biological systems work—from students to researchers investigating specific traits or conditions—it uses Rust's type system to enforce relationships between biological entities. The project includes 13 organ systems, genetic variants with ancestry-specific data, and clinical pathology models, generated largely through AI-assisted coding.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I started this trying to understand two things: why my Asian friends turn red after drinking, and why several friends all seemed to have migraine clusters. I was reading medical papers and textbooks, but kept getting lost jumping between topics. I thought: what if I could just Cmd+Click through this like code? What if "ALDH2 gene" was actually clickable, and took me to the variant, the phenotype, the population frequencies? So I started modeling human biology in Rust with my Ralph agent (Claude in a loop, ty ghuntley). Turns out the type system is perfect for this. Every biological entity is strongly-typed with relationships enforced at compile time. After 1 day of agent coding: - 277 Rust files, ~95k lines of code - 1,561 tests passing - 13 complete organ systems - Genetics with ancestry-specific variants - Clinical pathology models Try it: git clone https://github.com/lantos1618/open_human_ontology cd open_human_ontology cargo run --example ide_navigation_demo Then open `examples/ide_navigation_demo.rs` and Cmd+Click through: Understanding Asian flush: AsianGeneticVariantsCatalog::get_metabolic_variants() // Click through to: // → ALDH2 gene on chromosome 12q24.12 // → rs671 variant (Glu504Lys) // → 40% frequency in Japanese population // → Alcohol flush reaction // → 10x esophageal cancer risk with alcohol // → Acetaldehyde metabolism pathway Understanding migraines: Migraine { subtype: WithAura, triggers: [Stress, LackOfSleep, HormonalChanges], genetic_variants: ["rs2075968", "rs1835740"], ... } // Click through to: // → 17 migraine trigger types // → 12 aura symptom types // → Genetic risk factors // → Why clusters happen (HormonalChanges → Menstruation) Now I can actually navigate the connections instead of flipping through PDFs. Heart → CoronaryArtery → Plaque. VisualCortex → 200M neurons → NeuralConnection pathways. It's like Wikipedia but type-checked and with jump-to-definition. This isn't production medical software - it's a learning tool. But it's way more useful than textbooks for understanding how biological systems connect. The agent keeps expanding it. Sometimes it OOMs but that's part of the fun. Tech: Rust, nalgebra, serde, rayon, proptest I am not a dr or medical professional this is for my education you can commit to it if you want to or review and open some PR's if you find wrong information or want to add references.
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