Synthetic Biology:ToolsWishlist

This page discusses some ideas for software tools that might be useful to synthetic biologists. Feel free to contribute.

Tools ought to be designed like an extensible integrated development environment (IDE) such as Eclipse. Usability should be a primary design gaol. The tools should make work more productive for synthetic biologists from a variety of backgrounds. Tools should work together, sharing a common representation for biological parts, devices, systems, and strains. New functionality ought to be easy to add via a plug-in API, and should be able to take advantage of a common framework for displaying and manipulating DNA sequences, parts, devices, systems, and strains.