Team:Rutgers/humanpractices

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Rutgers 2012 iGEM Team: Biofuels in Biology

Rutgers 2012 iGEM Team: Biofuels in Bacteria

Rutgers University Human Practices

The Rutgers iGEM team is in the early stages of developing mobile software for researchers to use on their mobile phones and other mobile devices.  Currently, the synthetic biology industry is in its infancy in terms of software toolkits. 

The Rutgers University mobile software team is working to create a piece of mobile software that allows the user to view DNA sequencing files, better known as .ABI files, on mobile devices. The user will have the ability to edit, compare, and blast various DNA sequences. 

 

Software Methodology

Bioinformatics, a fast growing branch of biology and data science utilizes powerful tools to study genomic, proteomic, transcriptomic and other 'omics'.

Allowing such tools on a smart phone allows a scientist to make powerful decisions about his or her research quickly.

Here, we decided to utilize only two of these powerful tools: BLAST and a multiple sequence algorithm such as CLUSTALW. BLAST, ( Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is a sequence analysis program that can be used to make inferences such as species identification and phylogenetic analysis along with protein domain homology and structure in the case of proteins. CLUSTALW can make global multiple alignments of DNA and protein sequences.

Our prospective app aims to read an ABI trace file format. This file is an output of a sequencing run where probabilities of a base occurance are scored. In days, unknown DNA can be sequenced and in minutes understood.

We hope that this app will thrust biology into the world of technology. As scientists we know that nothing can stay still forever, things are constantly evolving. As such we must do the same and bring our practices to the next generation.