Proposal for parameter database

Introduction

Diving into our first experience in synthetic biology this summer has been an interesting and rewarding experience. Combining modeling approaches with biology has lead to huge developments in the field of systems biology, but to make accurate predictions from models, they need to be based on good experimental data. Unfortunately, the data required for many models is in short supply or has different values, many orders of magnitude apart, in different papers. We had to spend considerable time in our project researching parameter values for our model and found this experience extremely challenging.

Our Solution

In our opinion, finding parameters for our model took far longer than it should have in comparison with finding data in other scientific disciplines. This was due to the lack of organisation of the relevant data. We wish to help future iGEM teams (and the rest of the systems biology community) by proposing that a new database be created solely for parameter values relating to Biobricks in the registry. This database would be the new technical standard which would be critical in modelling and simulating Biobricks and thus making the modelling of iGEM projects easier and more accurate in the future.

This database would be a far more efficient and useful way to share biological data which, hopefully, in the future will be of great merit and value for systems biology as a whole.

You can see our database proposal here.

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