iGaME: Synthetic Biology for Gamers

To promote public awareness of synthetic biology and introduce its basic ideas to the laymen, our team is devoted to the development of an experimental video game which aims at instructing non-biologists to design and improve biological systems. Following the games-with-a-purpose paradigm in which players help solve scientific problems, we apply the human brain's puzzle-solving abilities to the complex designs of biological systems. While most of developed simulation tools are designed for experts to model the reaction networks from scratch, our game integrates a modeling environment in which users only need to submit their assembling of parts for our program to discover and generate the biological model automatically. With a mass of data for the use of modeling, we propose the Standard Biological Parts Automatic Modeling Database Language, which enables descriptions of complicated biological processes. Additionally, previous iGEM project models will be featured to demonstrate the availability of our idea.

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• New Database Language
  

A new language called MoDeL (Standard Biological Part Automatic Modeling Database Language) is proposed for automatic modeling of biological system. Due to introducing of novel concepts of species and reaction templates, which are two main components in MoDeL, interactions between species need not to be completely provided and thus making automation possible. [Learn More]

• Demos of Automatic Modeling
  

To show results of our program, some classical genetic regulatory networks are provided as demos, including toggle switch, repressilator as well as quorum-sensing oscillator. Each selected demo, representing a certain pattern of reaction network in biological process, is carefully designed to cover all our features as much as possible. [Learn More]

• Human Practice
  

We started a long term human practice, “the C project”, since this summer to explore the approaches of promotion of synthetic biology. “the C project”, as we call, consists of three parts: Curriculum, Communication and Community. All three parts are carefully designed and organized. [Learn More]