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Team:SUSTC-Shenzhen-A/RFC
From 2012.igem.org
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Ways leading to a standardized bio-engineered-world
In 2003, the first attempt to make a synthetic biology a discipline that everyone can share about it was made. After the appearance of the first BioBrick(tm), the concept about standardization had been widely accepted. And it is a trend in synthetic biology now.
Thanks to the standardization, biologists have developed many useful tools with the help of the standardized parts, the BioBricks. These BioBricks really contribute a lot to the research field. And they make easier for researchers to communicate with each other under the same technical standards. Due to the convenience of BioBricks, thousands of BioBricks have been created and introduced during these years. Thus the database containing these BioBricks is getting larger and larger.
But here comes the problem. Since every one can share their BioBricks, sometimes the information of the BioBricks are incomplet when they submit. So it becomes hard for users to search for a BioBrick that they want. Although there is an RFC, RFC 52 already, but we are not satisfied. Because of the generl description of it, the database of the BioBricks is still a mess. So we want to create a new RFC to replace RFC 52.
We want to establish an RFC to describe the minimum information for a qualified BioBrick. We listed the minimum information a BioBrick should have, and gave a short description for each of them. Especially, we want to qualify the classification of BioBricks. All the BioBricks should be organized, so that users can search for it easily.
The current problem
Informations are not complete in partsregistry.org
When the partsregistry.org was established at first, it is worth to be called the authority of the BioBricks. But as time goes by, more and more BioBrics are added in, now partsregistry.org becomes less satisfy. Information of many BioBricks are incomplete, some even wrong. Because every one can submit his or her BioBrick as long as one logs in, many information is informal since the website doesn't examine the information users submit. This would waste resource as well as mess up the database.
Moreover, the layout of the website becomes more unclear as the database becomes larger and larger. For example, the Catlog. In this page, BioBricks are classified according to many different criteria. But the interface style in one section is far different from it in another section. A large list will be prsented in front of users with hundreds of BioBricks, but no search tool is availabel for users to search for the BioBrick that they really want. All of these would increase the difficulty for users to find the information that they want.
Informations are not useful in database
We get a database that contains all the information about all the BioBricks. In this database, every BioBrick has 40 properties, they are:
part_id (this is essential to locate a BioBrick in a database) part_name
