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Lessons from Fraxinus, a crowd-sourced citizen science game in genomics.

Ghanasyam Rallapalli | Fraxinus Players | Diane Go Saunders | Kentaro Yoshida | Anne Edwards | Carlos A Lugo | Steve Collin | Bernardo Clavijo | Manuel Corpas | David Swarbreck | Matthew Clark | J Allan Downie | Sophien Kamoun | Team Cooper | Dan MacLean
eLife | 2015

In 2013, in response to an epidemic of ash dieback disease in England the previous year, we launched a Facebook-based game called Fraxinus to enable non-scientists to contribute to genomics studies of the pathogen that causes the disease and the ash trees that are devastated by it. Over a period of 51 weeks players were able to match computational alignments of genetic sequences in 78% of cases, and to improve them in 15% of cases. We also found that most players were only transiently interested in the game, and that the majority of the work done was performed by a small group of dedicated players. Based on our experiences we have built a linear model for the length of time that contributors are likely to donate to a crowd-sourced citizen science project. This model could serve a guide for the design and implementation of future crowd-sourced citizen science initiatives.

Pubmed ID: 26219214

Research resources used in this publication

None found

Antibodies used in this publication

None found

Associated grants

  • Agency: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: BBS/E/J/000CA523

Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.

This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) (tool)

RRID:SCR_006515

Public archive providing a comprehensive record of the world''''s nucleotide sequencing information, covering raw sequencing data, sequence assembly information and functional annotation. All submitted data, once public, will be exchanged with the NCBI and DDBJ as part of the INSDC data exchange agreement. The European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) captures and presents information relating to experimental workflows that are based around nucleotide sequencing. A typical workflow includes the isolation and preparation of material for sequencing, a run of a sequencing machine in which sequencing data are produced and a subsequent bioinformatic analysis pipeline. ENA records this information in a data model that covers input information (sample, experimental setup, machine configuration), output machine data (sequence traces, reads and quality scores) and interpreted information (assembly, mapping, functional annotation). Data arrive at ENA from a variety of sources including submissions of raw data, assembled sequences and annotation from small-scale sequencing efforts, data provision from the major European sequencing centers and routine and comprehensive exchange with their partners in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC). Provision of nucleotide sequence data to ENA or its INSDC partners has become a central and mandatory step in the dissemination of research findings to the scientific community. ENA works with publishers of scientific literature and funding bodies to ensure compliance with these principles and to provide optimal submission systems and data access tools that work seamlessly with the published literature. ENA is made up of a number of distinct databases that includes the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (Embl-Bank), the newly established Sequence Read Archive (SRA) and the Trace Archive. The main tool for downloading ENA data is the ENA Browser, which is available through REST URLs for easy programmatic use. All ENA data are available through the ENA Browser. Note: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL-Bank) is entirely included within this resource.

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SAMTOOLS (tool)

RRID:SCR_002105

Original SAMTOOLS package has been split into three separate repositories including Samtools, BCFtools and HTSlib. Samtools for manipulating next generation sequencing data used for reading, writing, editing, indexing,viewing nucleotide alignments in SAM,BAM,CRAM format. BCFtools used for reading, writing BCF2,VCF, gVCF files and calling, filtering, summarising SNP and short indel sequence variants. HTSlib used for reading, writing high throughput sequencing data.

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ABySS (tool)

RRID:SCR_010709

Software providing de novo, parallel, paired-end sequence assembler that is designed for short reads. ABySS 1.0 originally showed that assembling human genome using short 50 bp sequencing reads was possible by aggregating half terabyte of compute memory needed over several computers using standardized message passing system. ABySS 2.0 is Resource Efficient Assembly of Large Genomes using Bloom Filter. ABySS 2.0 departs from MPI and instead implements algorithms that employ Bloom filter, probabilistic data structure, to represent de Bruijn graph and reduce memory requirements.

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