Difference between revisions of "GSOC Project Ideas 2016"

Revision as of 00:19, 18 February 2016

There are plenty of challenging and interesting project ideas this year. These projects include a broad set of skills, technologies and domains, such as GUIs, database integration and algorithms.

Students are also encouraged to propose their own ideas related to our projects. If you have strong computer skills and have an interest in biology or bioinformatics, you should definitely apply! Do not hesitate to propose your own project idea: some of the best applications we see are by students that go this route. As long as it is relevant to one of our projects, we will give it serious consideration. Creativity and self-motivation are great traits for open source programmers.

• Project Idea Name
  • Brief explanation: Brief description of the idea, including any relevant links, etc.
  • Expected results: describe the outcome of the project idea.
  • Knowledge prerequisites: programming language(s) to be used, plus any other particular computer science skills needed.
  • Skill level: Basic, Medium or Advanced.
  • Mentors: name + contact details of the lead mentor, name + contact details of backup mentor.

Here is a list of the proposed project ideas for 2016:

• Project Idea 1: Biological Graph Visualization
  • Brief explanation: Tripal (http://tripal.info) is an open-source suite of Drupal modules that allows a scientific research community to more easily setup and manage a data repository for genomic, genetic and related biological data. It provides data pages, data mining tools and visualizations. Tripal is used or in development by over 25 different genome database websites, and is developed by an international group. A Tripal module currently exists for importing, searching and visualizing graph data that models the "network" of interactions of various components of a biological system. However, the module is not complete and requires improvements to the visualizations. The goal of this project would be to complete the remaining work for this module such that it can be shared with others.
  • Expected results: Once completed, a Drupal module will freely available for Tripal-based sites to use on their own sites. Thus providing graph visualizations for complex biological systems.
  • Knowledge prerequisites: PHP, Drupal, JavaScript, SQL.
  • Skill level: Medium
  • Mentors: Stephen Ficklin

• Project Idea 2: Github-based revision control of synthetic chromosomes
  • Brief explanation: JBrowse (http://jbrowse.org) is a robust open-source genome visualization tool built around Javascript and HTML5. It has gained wide acceptance among biologists and bioinformatisist with thousands of active installations worldwide in genomic research. This project deals with a module that enables management synthetic DNA sequences in JBrowse. Synthetic biologists design DNA sequences that differ from their analogous sequences in natural organisms. As with code, the differences can be incremental or radical, and can be visualized using “diff”-like tools. And, also as with code, good revision control is fundamentally important. We propose to build module that enables biologists to manage synthetic sequences. This will contribute toward a broader effort to visualize the results of synthetic biology experiments in the computational design phase, after synthesis (via DNA re-sequencing), and to verify gene expression under various conditions (via RNA sequencing). We propose to store revisions of synthetic chromosome sequences in git (primarily github) repositories. The project would include the development of plugin components on both the server and client sides. The new extensions would provided a means of detection of branch and tag updates on the github repos and provide a means to select and retrieve the synthetic sequences from github. The backend part of the plugin would provide a means to manage multiple synthetic sequences and manipulate associated JBrowse-based datasets. This is a challenging and exciting project at the interface of computational and synthetic biology. You’ll have lots of guidance developing cool science tools that will have a relevant impact to the scientific community.
  • Expected results: Your module will be exploited at large by a new breed of synthetic biologists.
  • Knowledge prerequisites: Candidates should have some good experience with Javascript, HTML5 & CSS3. Experience with REST, Node.js, Dojo, and jQuery, or Github API would be a plus (you’ll be learning it all). If you think biology is cool and would like to learn a lot more about it, that’s a plus too.
  • Skill level: Medium
  • Mentors: Eric Yao, Lead JBrowse Developer

• Project Idea 3: Lightweight chat plugin for the JBrowse genome browser
  • Brief explanation: Increasingly, genome scientists collaborate remotely from multiple sites: at genome centers in academic institutions, from biotech companies, from clinical labs and (increasingly with the advent of portable genome sequencing) from field sites. This project idea is to develop a lightweight messaging/chat plugin for JBrowse using OAuth2 and the Faye pub/sub framework. Users will be able to see who else is currently browsing the genome (provided that they have set themselves as visible), to see where they are browsing, and to send and receive messages. A possible extension is to post comments on the genome. The general idea here is to make genomes (and their constituent objects, e.g. gene annotations) into “social objects”. This is in keeping with our vision of JBrowse as not just a tool for genomics, but for social genomics. The availability of thousands of JBrowse instances which could readily incorporate the plugin offers the possibility quick and deep adoption by the genomics community.
  • Expected results: This module will enable a new way for bioengineers to share and socialize genomic information.
  • Knowledge prerequisites: Javascript/HTML5/CSS3. NodeJS, Dojo a plus. Digging science, a plus.
  • Skill level: Medium
  • Mentors: Ian Holmes, Principal Investigator and founder of JBrowse