Phenylketonuria: A Comprehensive Educational Guide

Inspiration

Phenylketonuria is a rare genetic disease that barely anybody knows about. This may be because of its complexity. However, this disease is inherited and can cause serious permanent damage if not treated. Therefore, it is important for people to understand the disease. Our project does this by providing an in-depth understanding to the common person in an interactive way.

What it does

Our project is an interactive article about Phenylketonuria. It provided the user with in-depth knowledge, from the causes to effects, and everything in between. For example, gene deletions are one of the causes of Phenylketonuria. Our article goes into depth about gene deletions, so that the user completely understands the intersection between biology and the disease. It quizzes the user throughout to check for understanding. In addition, it asks for the user's name and encourages the user at various points with it.

How we built it

We built it using Python on Repl.it. This is our first coding project, hackathon, and python project.

Challenges we ran into

This is our first time working with Python. We had to learn the syntax, which was a challenge. Even though it felt like being put in uncharted territory, it was definitely an enriching and thrilling experience. In addition, we had to do in-depth research about Phenylketonuria, and then rewrite the information in an easily understandable way. This was hard to do in a 3-day time crunch.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of how we used various Python functions and features, such as loops, inputs, lists, indexing, and if-else clauses, We are extremely proud of ourselves since we did this despite having no coding knowledge initially.

What we learned

We learned Python syntax. In addition, we learned a lot about Phenylketonuria and how it ties into biology concepts, such as meiosis, mutations, transcription, and translation.

What's next for Phenylketonuria: A Comprehensive Educational Guide

We can learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to make the UI even more user-friendly and interactive. We can learn how to incorporate Python into HTML. In addition, we could make Python models to explain various concepts. For example, a Python algorithm could perform DNA transcription and translation. Then, it could do a gene deletion, and show the result on the protein end-product. There is a huge scope!