Genigma

GENIGMA

Duration:
3 years (September 2018 -August 2021)

Funding:
ORION project _ORION has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº741527.

Summary
GENIGMA is a citizen science project born from the will to establish a partnership between the research laboratory of Marc Martí-Renom of the Centro Nacional de Análisi Genómico (CNAG-CRG) in Barcelona and the citizens.

The aim of the project is to study the 3D structure of the cancer cell genome and provide the scientists with new means to design new and more focused care strategies.

The final product of GENIGMA will be a smartphone (or tablet) application in videogame format. The app will be presented in February 2020 and later will be available on smartphone or tablet from all over the world.

Why involve directly citizens in this research? To use a metaphore, one could say that the human cells genome is like a long tale composed of 3.000 milions of letters (nucleic bases) organized in 23 pairs of books (chromosome).

The process to access and “reading these books” is very long and complex. Although there are machine and computer programs that allow to extract and read small fragments, these digital tools still do not work perfectly and are often prone to errors. The human eye is still one of the most reliable tools to detect small details that escape the machines.

This is why people were asked to collaborate in this research. By involving a large number of people and relying on each person to analyze a small portion of the genome, better results can be achieved in less time.

The role of ANT in GENIGMA ANT was chosen to be partner of excellence in this project with the aim of ensuring the involvement of citiziens, especially patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals in the scientific research processes.

• In March, ANT participated in one of the co-creation sessions organized in Barcelona, which involved patients, healthcare professionals and narrators
• In the current phase, ANT is collecting interests and opinions on scientific and recreational topics that will be incorporated into the app.
• Subsequently, ANT will be involved in testing the first version of the game scheduled until December.

ANT Partners:

• CNAG Centre Nacional d’Anàlisi Genòmica (by CRG Center for Genomic Regulation)
• ARIMA Genomics

For more information:
silvia.varani@ant.it;
melania.raccichini@ant.it;
luca.franchini@ant.it

Social:
Website: https://genigma.app/?lang=it

Read the article: https://genigma.app/en/ant-collaborates-with-genigma-to-involve-pacients-in-the-app-design/