Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Flash UI


Here's what our Flash UI parts browser is going to look like...


The basic idea is that you can drag and drop parts and it will give you hints what will go next (say to a promoter) or what proteins that a gene will produce that can regulate other promoters (including self).

iGEM wiki

I added some advantages of using PoBoL (have two of them right now on the wiki). Any one can think of more (ofcourse other than the two on the wiki, which I restate here for convenience)...

  1. Whatever are our advantages of using OWL, that is we can get a very basic reasoning unit.
  2. The files are serializeable (easily transmitted without any strings attached) over the web, and can be hosted at many end points (at the host's convenience), leading to a decentralized storage.
The link to University of Washington iGEM wiki

Thanks

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

TODOs

Todos for the BioBrick to PoBoL conversion
1) Get the DNA and Sequence Info (straightforward from or partsregistry DAS)
2) Set up the webpage
3) Have a OWL validator set up

After that we need to figure out how are we going to figure out what part is a promoter, and what repressor or activation sites it has (if any). [This is for main goal for converting a schematic to biobrick.]

Webpage for converting BB into PoBoL

I was thinking about a user friendly way to have BioBrick information converted into PoBoL. One of the ideas was to provide a GUI front end to the python scripts. In the GUI I was thinking it will be wonderful to have a web page preview of the actual BioBrick being saved, just to make sure right information is being parsed and entered.

However, after searching for how to embed a browser in Python (without using COM/CORBA, in which case firefox could be embedded in GUI), I think it will be lot easier if there was a web page, where on the left side there was an editable table of entries for info going into the PoBoL format and right side was a preview of the current BioBrick. Probably, I am going to password protect the page to avoid spammer.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Example run for current revision

Here is what the revision 6 in the repository parses. The part is BBaJ01120. The sequence information for parts is available from the DAS site's xml markup (which is why this script does not parse that yet).

$ python bb_parser.py
Date Entered: 2006-01-05
Sacrafical OnRFP Kan vector i12351 in pSB2K3
a sacraficial kan vector used for swapping
resistances by removing the onRFP indicator...
loss of color as success. Sequence and Features


# The '=' denote end of line(s)
# All the info is in dictionary
$ python bb_parser.py
Key: Data:
Designed by Golden Bear=
Members of these groups may edit the part -
Endy Lab, iGEM_Berkeley, Knight Lab, Part Editors, Registry=

Owner - Golden Bear=
DNA Status Planning=
Part Type Intermediate=
Categories //classic/intermediate/uncategorized=
Short Description Sacrafical OnRFP Kan vector=

TwinParts Info
BBa_J14463 Planning.
BBa_J14462 Planning.
BBa_I763033 Available.
BBa_J01121 Planning.
BBa_I13521 Available.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

First Import Into the Repository

Alright, some code is in the repository. Although it's not very functional (which is different from working), I wanted some revision control over it.

Check it out and run "svn update" often!

Feel free to google svn how to or checkout (pun intended) my take on it at: HowTo:SVN.