Viz-A-Brick: A new way to visualize the Registry

Visit Viz-A-Brick and try it for yourself! [1]

As the Registry of Standard Biological Parts expands, it becomes increasingly important that users be able to efficiently and effectively navigate the Registry in search for not only basic parts, but intermediates and devices to optimize the ability of the community to extend the field of Synthetic Biology. We have created a tool that assists the user in navigating the Registry and visualizing the relationships between subparts, parts, superparts, and devices in the Registry. This program will be made freely available to the teams participating in the iGEM2008 Jamboree and is freely available to the entire Synthetic Biology community through the following link.

The above screenshot illustrates the utility of Viz-A-Brick. The program is user-interactiveWhen a part is selected from the registry, it becomes the focus of the visualization. (BBa_B0033 in our example.) This part is then joined on the right by an edge to all subparts of it in the Registry and on the left by all of its superparts in the Registry. Given a specific part, this allows the user to quickly determine the fundamental parts used to build the part, but also those intermediates and devices that have already been constructed by others and are available through the Registry. This could have considerable impact on the efficiency with which the community can move forward by reducing the amount of redundancy in building things from one year to the next. The tool also shows information about the quality and experience with the parts.