Registry:New features
Welcome to the latest update of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts! We've been working hard to bring you a new look, new user experience and features. Starting with the name parts.igem.org, we have re-built your Registry from the ground up. We hope you like the new site and would love to hear any feedback at hq@igem.org.
New Front page
We have updated our main page to a better visual style. There are more images, better icons and a new feature box to highlight great parts, collections and anything else we want to show. You’ll notice the Site Navigation bar on the left hand side of the page, which becomes the catalog navigation menu on other pages.
One of the first changes you might notice is the change of our name from parts.igem.org to parts.igem.org. You’ll also notice the iGEM logo in the header. The Registry is owned and operated by the iGEM foundation and we want you to be aware of this when you are contributing pages and requesting parts.
We have changed our header to include comprehensive menus of the important areas of the sites. While you may be looking for parts on the registry, you might also want to learn about what we do here at iGEM, or how to make and assemble parts together. These options and many more are accessible in a much more transparent manner in our new menus.
Feature Boxes
The final addition to the front page is the feature box system. We have included a way to publicize great parts, collections and any other features we want to highlihght on the Registry.
These features will change periodically and eventually become archived in the feature box archive.
We are introducing this feature with a dozen feature boxes. As teams create more, we will change and add more to the Registry main page.
Part Page Changes
We have refreshed the design of the part page menu. This menu is now at the top of the part page to highlight the difference between the part page and the rest of the Registry site. There are now only 5 pages across the top:
- main page
- design
- experience
- information
- tools
We have included more options within the tools menu. Most of the standard iGEM Registry tools can be found here. In addition, we have community generated part tools, such as genbank format generator, sbol format generator and LabGenius.
We have changed the look of the part pages and included some new features. In the top right hand corner of the page is the quick reference box. This box gives you access to:
- Part release status (more on this later)
- In stock status (more on this later)
- Review
- No of uses
Here is an example of the part quck reference box (BBa_J23101):
We hope this additional information allows you to quickly determine if you have found the part you are looking for and if so, how to get it.
[http://beta.labgeni.us/welcome/ LabGenius Plasmid Visualization]
We have partnered with a startup called LabGenius to bring you better plasmid mapping tools. In the part sequence box, we have included a link to the LabGenius plasmid map viewer. This tool shows you how parts and plasmid backbones look as circular DNA.
| LabGenius can be found for a part in the part tools menu here: | This is an example output for the plasmid mapper: |
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Categories
The Registry has had part categories for the previous several releases, but the functionality provided by this system was not fully used. We have made changes that greatly increase the importance of part categories.
This system allows you to tell the Registry that your part is constitutive, for E. coli, a promoter and even the sigma factor information if you have it. It can also be part of a collection or a kit if you have made many similar parts.
These identifiers will allow other users to find your part more easily and quickly. We encourage you to use as many categories as are representative of your part as possible, as this will give other users more ways of finding it. See an example here [create example].
New Login system
The login system has been updated to work faster and also includes additional security. You no longer need to login on a separate page and navigate back to your page of interest.
Part Quick Reference box
Another feature is the part quick reference box. We have included a way to display information about a part in text without having to go to the part page itself. Whenever you see a link like this: BBa_J23100 you can get information about the part. You need to use the following code for the quick reference box: <partinfo>BBa_B0015</partinfo>.
This is a special feature to the Registry, soc conventional links like this: https://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_J23100 will not work.
Tools
The LabGenius tool has already been described and you can see an example of it [http://beta.labgeni.us/registries/parts_registry/?part=BBa_I13907 here]. We have included a Google site search so that you can now search across the Registry and all previous iGEM wikis. There is a lot of information associated with parts that does not appear on part pages, which we are making accessible with this addition.