PXYL Genetics Laboratory

PXYL Laboratories
PXYS

Inspiration

Our valued team member, Madeline Savic, is a double IT/Science student, majoring in genetics. We felt that using her knowledge of genetics would put our team apart from the rest of the competition. We came up with the idea to create a genetic inheritance simulator. It would provide high school students with the tools to explore genetics without the expensive upkeep of live drosophila flies.

What it does

PXYL Genetics Lab simulates real-life genetics experiments with drosophila flies. Instead of flies however, it crosses Pxys. Pxys are colourful, square-shaped creatures with simple, clear-cut genetics. The user crosses two Pxys, and the program outputs their offspring based on their genotypes. These crosses are all based off real-life genetics.

How we built it

In python, we used Flask to interact with the front end JavaScript. The python code takes the genotypes of the parents and randomly combines them. It selects the correct images for the offspring and sends their URLs back to the front end, where it displays them.

Challenges we ran into

We are fairly inexperienced in web-based programming, so getting the backend to talk to the frontend took most of our time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The simplistic design of both the Pxys and our logo are aesthetically pleasing and follow a common design. The 'XY' in the middle of our logo and the word 'PXYS' is a good reference to the XY chromosome pair in genetics. The end product was somewhat viable, which was good.

What we learned

We learnt how to make the front and back end interact. Next time we will try to be familiar with the software we are familiar with. We learnt a bit more of GitHub and how to use it in group assignments.

What's next for PXYL Genetics Laboratory

We would like to expand the Laboratory past just the genetic inheritance simulator. We would like to add other simulations that provide high school students with valuable hands-on learning opportunities.

Built With

Submitted to

Bit by Bit Hackathon 2019

Created by

I worked with all the non-coding aspects of the project. I created most of the pitch, the pxys and our logo. The team name was also my idea.

SeveralMillionBees Inskip
I worked on explaining the basic genetic interactions that we needed to have in our application to the rest of the team, as I was the only person knowledgeable in this topic. I helped out with any html and css in the application along with developing the pitch.

MaddieSavic Savic
I worked in the back end, with some obscure python module to code the logic and communicating with JS and HTML. I also helped on the web design

GitAccountThatIMade Nardella