CRISPy Hair Salon teaches advance high school or undergraduate students how the new technology of CRISPR Cas9 can be used as a tool for gene editing. Specifically it emphasizes the guiding sgRNA’s role in identifying the correct target in the desired DNA sequence, as well as tests the player’s memory on which nucleotides pair between DNA and RNA strands.

For this project, my role was the main programmer. I created scripts to assign a random gene sequence for each game, randomize nucleotide tiles to fall at random intervals, track which nucleotide the player caught, determine if it matched the next spot in the target DNA sequence or not, and also increase the speed and difficulty as the timer decreased. I also programmed all of the UI and the triggers for the win and loss states.