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 us all scientists working in human genetics. We could say that this is “the map” we use to put our results of our experiments in a larger context.

For the cell to work properly this DNA sequence has to be packed inside the nucleus in a particular way. During the last years scientific community devised new experimental tools to look at how the DNA is folded within each cell.

Also, it was discovered that a wrong folding of the DNA lead to the onset of several diseases, like developmental anomalies or cancer. One of the most common situations that lead to cancer is the spatial rearrangement of certain DNA parts, that will affect the correct functioning of the cell. This is, regions of the genome that before were distant in space now come close together and, in an unlucky situation, will affect the correct functioning of genes. This is mostly the landscape for cancer cells.

So, what happens when scientist want to work in a cancer cell model? Should they still use the genomic map for healthy cells? No!

We should have the particular map for the cancer cell types. These are the goals in Genigma: On one side, we all will identify the DNA regions that are most commonly shuffled in cancers, and on another hand, taking advantage of the 3D genome conformation we will assemble particular cancer genomes that could serve the scientific community to make better Science and generate more accurate and tailored results.

These objectives will not be achieved without the collaboration of you all! There do exist algorithms that do this, but we know that human eye can be more accurate than computers when we have to identify and recognize visual patterns.

One key point behind Genigma (and in general behind citizen science) is to split a big problem in smaller ones.
These will be distributed to citizens so they can solve a small part, and will return all the results to scientist.

Would you join us?

Juan