Blog

The experiment is over. We close the game for data analysis.

Between June and September 2022 the GENIGMA app remained open with new data from the breast cancer genome. The goal was to validate the tool and test different resolution to obtain best results for research. The challenge we launched in the summer was to solve 250 new sets of 15 and 12 pieces at different […]

#GenigmaChallenge. Achieved in139 days!

On 16 June heralded the conclusion of the #GenigmaChallenge, the first participative experiment to analyse the human genome through a mobile phone app, GENIGMA, in which more than 39,000 people from 154 countries participated. –> 600,287 solutions have been gathered in a matter of 20 weeks and 181 Eureka! regions, areas of the genome of […]

The #GenigmaChallenge is on!

From 27th of January 2022, the day we have launched the app, you can follow all the news of Genigma on the official website: genigmagame.app Join the #GenigmaChallenge and collaborate!

3..2..1… almost there!

We are very excited to reach the final stage of the project of creation and development of the game … and we are preparing the official launch of GENIGMA. Almost 500 people have supported and helped us so far: we are looking forward to many more people joining us in this challenge! #Staytuned

What have we learned? ORION Inspiring stories

In the framework of the European project ORION (Open Responsible research and Innovation to further Outstanding kNowledge), the main funder of GENIGMA, a series of “Inspiring Stories” have been developed to describe the impact that the “experiments” carried out have had on scientists, research centers and funders. The Stories have been published to explain the lessons […]

New test with Phd and Postdocs from the University of Bologna

New test with Phd and Postdocs from the University of Bologna Last week students, PhDs and postdocs from the Faculties of Physics and Genomics of the University of Bologna have been playing a game to analyze the genome of chromosome 15 of the breast cancer cell line T47D. With this new test we tried to […]

Genigma moves forward in collaboration with high school students

During the month of April 2021, more than 150 secondary school students from Catalonia and Italy have collaborated with the project in testing the app and in proposals for the game’s communication campaign addressed to young people. Based on a joint meeting between teachers, the ANT Foundation team and our expert in Citizen Science, an […]

Preparing a new test with high schools students

We are in the process of releasing an improved version of the game and we will test it with students from different Italian and Spanish high schools. To prepare the activities, we have been meeting with some teachers from Liceo Terragni and with colleagues from the ANT Foundation in Bologna, to determine the objectives and […]

Alphatest 3, now also in Italian

Yesterday, 25th January, we were able to test the game again with people of different profiles, ages and countries. We were accompanied by teachers, disseminators, high school students and representatives of associations against cancer from Catalonia and Italy. We would like to thank all the participants for their collaboration and especially to the Liceo Terragni de […]

Aphatest 2

We continue with the tests of the game, extending the range of participants gradually, to detect aspects to be improved. Many thanks to today’s participants, some of whom were repeating, who gave us good inputs and validated the improvements applied after the previous test. We will continue in 2021 with more tests. If you are […]

Genigma at the European Research Night

Our researchers have participated to the European Research Night, edition 2020. Have a look to the talk by Juan Rodríguez and Marc Martí-Renom here (in catalan) and by Marco Di Stefano here (in spanish).

First test of the game with external users

On Monday 16th November we presented the alpha version of the game to a group of participants from last year’s co-creation days. During the session, Oriol and Adrià, in charge of the Genigma gamification, collected the player’s inputs about the game dynamics and their feelings when playing. It was a very useful and participative session, […]

Gengima at the Citizen Science SDG Conference

The conference “Knowledge for Change: A decade of Citizen Science (2020-2030) in support of the SDGs” was an official event organized by the Germany’s EU Council presidency in October 2020. The conference goal was to present, evaluate and discuss the exciting contributions that citizen science makes in framing and achieving sustainable development, specifically the UN Sustainable […]

We presented the project at the ECSA Conference!

The ECSA 2020 conference – Encounters in citizen science – was held enterely online due to Coronavirus pandemic . We had the chance to present our project there. This Conference it’s the biggest citizen science meeting in Europe: the First International ECSA Conference was held in 2016 in Berlin. The Second International ECSA Conference was held […]

New tests and “Eureka!” regions

As the developers continue their work, our research team is continually testing the game to verify its functionality. Always using the non-cancerous GM12878 cell line, we are now running new tests on chromosomes 1, 20 and 21. We have started to prepare a first graphic that allows to visually illustrate the results obtained from the […]

Genigma image is ready!

These months we have been working on different aspects of the game and in parallel with different professionals. The responsible for the Genigma’s image is Xavi Ramiro, illustrator of video game and many other things, who contributed with his art to the project. He has participated from the very beguinning, drawing a first concept during […]

ORION meeting: we present the results of the first year of the project

Genigma is a citizen science experiment funded under the H2020 ORION project, coordinated by the Center for Genomic Regulation CRG . These year the 3rd Annual Meeting of the project has been held virtually, and the Genigma team presented the results of the first year, in which more than 300 people already participated in different […]

Confined yes, but advancing remotely

The emergence of # Covid19 has changed the world and the way of relating, but in many cases, as in our project, it has not prevented progress from being made remotely. In these months we are working in parallel the different teams: designers, programmers, scientists and communicators. You can find out who makes up our […]

Lab phase underway!

After months of testing with data already published, this January we started the experiments in the laboratory. This is an important step: we will extract DNA from the cancer cells that will be analyzed with the game. Yasmina Cuartero and Francois Le Dily are responsible at the CRG for doing the experiments in the lab […]

Players and algorithms

Many of you may wonder how we will ensure that playing Genigma will allow us to obtain scientific results. During last days we have been working in this direction with the data of the games that were obtained from 12 volunteers who played between 20 and 22 November. All match results were collected on the […]

Aligning game and science

On November 22nd, we organized an event with genome researchers to work on aligning the game with the science behind it. Taking advantage of all the information provided to us by the participants of the previous playtest (at the Open Prbb), we introduced some improvements to the prototype of the game, which were tested by […]

The importance of scientific collaborations

One of the frequently asked questions addressed to researchers is “What do you do exactly all day in the laboratory?” It is known that our work, which focuses on basic research, doesn’t produce anything concrete or immediately usable. For example, no one would think of asking the same question to a pastry chef, a plumber […]

Why genome structure is important?

We usually consider the human genome as a linear sequence of letters (the nucleotides). These form a book (the DNA molecule) and encode the information that determines the appearance and functions of our body. For example, specific combinations of nucleotides form the genes, that contain the information to produce the different proteins. The latter perform […]

ANT collaborates with Genigma to involve patients in the app design

Genigma begins a collaboration with Fondazione ANT Italia to involve patients, family members and healthcare professionals in the design phase of the app. ANT is one of the collaborators of the ORION Consortium (which supports the project) and collaborates in getting the voice of the public (and especially of patients, families, doctors) to the scientific […]

The Genigma scientific team is growing

Genigma has two new additions to the scientific team. These are Alessandra Merlotti and Pol Ezquerra, who will work side by side with Marco Di Stefano, Juan Rodríguez and Marc Martí Renom in their laboratory at CNAG-CRG. Alessandra is a PhD student at the University of Bologna (Italy). He specializes in the development and application […]

The gameplay works! First test of the prototype

On May 23rd we tested our first prototype with gamers of the Creative Research Park of Barcelona, within the framework of the Festival Calidoscopi19, dedicated to citizen science. We started the 3-hour session by sorting participants by clans and made them play with cards that simulated the mechanics of the video game we’re creating. The […]

Selection of two cancer cell lines for Genigma experiments

In order to select a set of two cancer cell lines on which we will perform the 3D genomics experiments, we conducted a survey among researchers at CRG. Those were the two most voted options and will be the first cell lines analyzed through Genigma. Our priority will be T47D. This cell line is one […]

el·lipse publishes the chronicle of the 3 co-creations of GENIGMA

The el·lipse magazine, from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), publishes an article on the development of the 3 co-creation sessions that were the starting point for this project. The objective of these sessions was to co-design with the citizens the basis of the game that we will develop to collectively research the genome of […]

Results of 3rd cocreation

In the last co-creation of the project, dedicated to share with the gamers the proposal of Genigma, we have seen how the project enriched with the expert view of those who are dedicated to design, perform and play daily with games and videogames. With a dynamization performed by the Jocs to the Segon team, we […]

Results of 2nd cocreation

Many ideas and proposals on March 9th in the second session of co-creation of the project! We met with about 30 people, with very different profiles (patients, hospital personnel, storytelling experts), in the Sagrada Familia Library to talk about emotions, narratives and game elements. Many ideas related to personal and professional histories, were transformed into […]

1st co-creation of Genigma (January 2019)

When we first envisioned our first co-creation we never thought it would be like this. Our objective with the first co-creation was to translate the scientific, convoluted science behind Genigma. It was a challenge also for us. How could we compress such a message in a few minutes, translate it to images & concepts, distribute […]

Genigma in a nutshell

Each cell of your body contains ~2 meters of DNA. Back in 2003, a large group of scientists completed the first draft of the human genome, where the sequence of letters of the human genome was deciphered and published. This first draft is been constantly improved during the years and serves as a reference for […]

Greetings!

Hi! In this blog we intend to keep a log of all the activities we carry on at Genigma. From co-creations to the results, or even pictures regarding the world of Genigma. Genigma is a game designed by citizens for citizens. So this is also yours. If you think you have an interesting topic you’d […]