• https://medicalxr.molbiol.ox.ac.uk/csynth.html

• Title: “CSynth: an interactive modelling and visualization tool for 3D chromatin structure”
• Authors: Stephen Todd, Peter Todd, Simon J McGowan, James R Hughes, Yasutaka Kakui, Frederic Fol Leymarie, William Latham, Stephen Taylor.
• Online since 30 Aug. 2020
• https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa757

• “CSynth: A Dynamic Modelling and Visualisation Tool for 3D Chromatin Structure”
• See: biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/499806v1

During our three days at Cheltenham Science Festival we interacted with over 1,000 people, engaging a variety of public, from young children to pensioners.

The recently opened Francis Crick Institute, focused on biomedical discovery, organises open evenings once a year; this year the main theme is “patterns” in biology and how these are used by scientists at the Crick Institute.

We will be present with a new version of CSynth in VR, the result of our collaboration with scientists at the Crick, an interactive experience we named “DNA origami” and focused on yeast: “Step inside the nucleus of a yeast cell in VR and watch and manipulate DNA as it folds into a complex pattern before your eyes and hands.”

www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/about-our-public-events/crick-lates/

The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is one of the biggest science festivals in the UK, attracting thousands of visitors every year. Our exhibit demonstrating the CSynth software will form one of 22 exhibits from Universities across the country. In our interactive demonstration we’ll take visitors on a journey to unravel how mistakes in a 3 billion letter DNA code can potentially have a huge impact on how cells work within the human body.

Using virtual reality technology, visitors will be able to use CSynth to delve inside a cell and see first-hand how the DNA molecule folds and bends. They’ll get a glimpse of how changes in this structure can alter DNA function and put people at increased risk of certain diseases. To get a taste of what will be in store, you can read more about last year’s exhibition:

royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/summer-science-exhibition/

“Togetherness is a beautiful thing – Professor Jim Hughes and Steve Taylor, two senior biomedical researchers from the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford, discuss the joy of collaboration. In their latest shared project, the pair are developing software that will enable scientists to visualise the three-dimensional structure of a DNA molecule inside a cell.”

more: http://researchfeatures.com/2017/02/01/all-under-one-roof-a-pioneering-vision-for-research-success/

On a late November Saturday, the CSynth team participated in “Super Science Saturday: The Science Behind the Headlines” at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (www.oum.ox.ac.uk), demonstrating activities designed to showcase some of the incredible research going on in Oxford.

Steve Taylor and a team from the Higgs/Hughes lab demonstrated their CSynth software, first exhibited at New Scientist Live in September. Using a huge touchscreen, the team showed how CSynth allows users to visualise and interact with genomics data in three dimensions.

The team had a great time demonstrating CSynth to the public for the first time at New Scientist Live in September at The ExCel, London. Using two 65″ V652 touchscreens generously supplied by NEC, the team used data from red blood cells and white blood cells to show how the physical structure of a specific region of DNA changes between different types of cells. Over 20,000 tickets were sold for the event, and attendees of all ages were fascinated by the software and the science. Find out more about how the team got on in this blog.

More info here:

https://www.imm.ox.ac.uk/about/blog/seeing-is-believing-what-does-your-dna-look-like-in-3d