Target Uses
Autogene is intended to be used as a powerful research and design tool with an intuitive interface and sophisticated functionality. A computer scientist may have to process a sequence without any knowledge of its contents, and we hope that this tool will help to bridge the gap between the computer science, and the biological science portions of bioinformatics by quickly providing feature annotations that previously could only be identified by a trained eye.
Implications & Vision
Autogene is still evolving as we advance on the design module, and fine tune the plasmid mapper. There are several features we’d like to develop in the future, including a 3D protein visualization, codon optimization, and primer design. We strive to achieve a comprehensive philosophy of Scan/Edit/Print. From the annotation of the starting sequence, to the gathering and arranging of desired features, to the development of building blocks to actually synthesize the given sequence, everything can be done through Autogene.
In some ways, Autogene is the first tool of its kind, and we hope that its development will demonstrate the potential of many new techniques and technologies when applied to synthetic biology. By exporting our alignments to the cloud, we’ve shown that complex computation, the kind that before could only be performed on very high-powered computers, can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. An increase in computational power for every researcher across the board could revolutionize synthetic biology, and scientific research in general.
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