  The molecular machinery of life is largely created via self-organisation of
individual molecules into functional assemblies. Minimal coarse-grained models,
where a whole macromolecule is represented by a small number of particles, can
be of great value in identifying the main driving forces behind
self-organisation in cell biology. Such models can incorporate data from both
molecular and continuum scales, and their results can be directly compared to
experiments. Here we review the state of the art of models for studying the
formation and biological function of macromolecular assemblies in cells. We
outline the key ingredients of each model and their main findings. We
illustrate the contribution of this class of simulations to identifying the
physical mechanisms behind life and diseases, and discuss their future
developments.
