Welcome to the Bioinformatics Hackathon on Plant Resistance Genes! In this competition, you will have the opportunity to apply your machine learning skills in the field of bioinformatics to identify potential plant resistance genes in a given plant species. By participating, you will contribute to the advancement of agricultural research and help address the global challenge of protecting crops against diseases.

## Problem statement

Plant resistance genes play a crucial role in plant defense mechanisms against various pathogens. Identifying these genes is a complex task that requires advanced computational techniques. In this competition, your task is to develop a machine learning model that can accurately classify whether a gene belongs to the plant resistance gene category or not.

You will be provided with a dataset of plant protein sequences, along with corresponding labels indicating whether each gene is a resistance gene or not. Your goal is to build a model that can effectively learn from this data and accurately identify resistance genes in unseen samples.

## Participation

This competition is open to university students of all backgrounds. It provides a platform for learning, collaboration and showcasing your skills to the wider community. Additionally, this competition offers a valuable opportunity to network with your peers and potentially collaborate on future research projects.

## Get started

To get started, make sure to review the competition rules, data description and evaluation criteria provided on the competition page. We also encourage you to explore the available resources, such as tutorials, example code, and relevant research papers, to enhance your understanding of plant resistance genes and machine learning techniques in bioinformatics.

Here is a handy link to Kaggle's [competition documentation](https://www.kaggle.com/docs/competitions), which includes, among other things, instructions on [submitting predictions](https://www.kaggle.com/docs/competitions#making-a-submission).

We wish you the best of luck in the Bioinformatics Hackathon! Join us in this journey to make a positive impact on agriculture and contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

## Winners
- Team 1 (best model award)
- Team 4 (creativity award)

## Acknowledgements
This hackathon is organized by [NGO Bioinformatika](https://bioinform-org.github.io/) and is part of the project "Bioinforming the youth". The project has been funded by the [Western Balkans Fund](https://westernbalkansfund.org/) and European Union, under the Call for Regional Project Proposals, "Support to the Promotion of Civil Society regional activities in the Western Balkans.