CIRRA · Flagship programme
Biological discovery intelligence.
CIRRA (circRNA Reasoning and Research Agent) is ASR Lab's flagship research programme, in active development. It is being built to rank circular RNA candidates by combining statistical signal with published mechanistic evidence, and to show the evidence behind each ranking. No validated results yet.
In active development. No validated results yet. Current scope: circRNA discovery and prioritisation.
Illustration — A circular RNA molecule — a covalently closed loop, resistant to exonuclease degradation.
The reasoning loop
Context → hypothesise → arbitrate → rank → validate → learn.
CIRRA is a reasoning system.
Each conclusion stays tied to its evidence, and each belief carries its uncertainty.
Biological question
A specific scientific problem in context.Context
Disease, cohort, modality, prior evidence.Candidate / claim
A circRNA candidate or mechanistic claim.Evidence
Published literature, databases, internal data.Competing mechanisms
Alternative biological interpretations.Belief
A calibrated assessment with uncertainty.Experimental utility
What experiment would resolve it.Validation
Wet-lab or computational evaluation.Outcome
What the experiment actually showed.Learning
How the system updates its beliefs.
Current workflow
The concrete circRNA journey.
The current implementation anchors the ambitious architecture in a real, bounded scientific workflow.
- Candidate data
- Identity normalisation
- Evidence enrichment
- Biological assessment
- Experimental-readiness assessment
- Explainable ranking + provenance
- Researcher review
- Validation decision
Architecture
Five layers, one continuous evidence trail.
Data flows from secure ingestion through reasoning and knowledge to reproducible reporting, with governance applied across every layer.
Ingestion
Secure intake of transcriptomic and molecular datasets with provenance tracking.Reasoning engine
Evidence aggregation and explainable inference over biological data.Knowledge layer
Curated pathways, literature, and structured biological knowledge.Governance & security
Encryption, access control, and jurisdiction-aware data governance.Reporting
Reproducible, inspectable reports and evidence trails.
Experimental reality
The experiment is the supervisor.
Every CIRRA belief is written to be tested. Wet-lab and computational validation decide what the system should learn next — not the other way around.
Illustration — A working laboratory at night.
Research horizon
Where the work is going.
CIRRA is focused on one problem at a time. This is the current horizon, not a product schedule.
Now
Evidence-grounded candidate ranking
CircRNA candidate data, literature and biological context in one inspectable ranking.
Next
Validation with research collaborators
Methods, limitations and results published when the evidence exists.
Later
Disease context and mechanistic reasoning
A longer research direction, not a delivery commitment.
Not claiming validated biomarkers or clinical utility, a production system, named partners, or external validation. We will publish evidence when it exists.
Collaborate on CIRRA research.
We work with selected research groups on circRNA discovery and evidence integration. A secure collaboration workflow begins after qualification.
Read the scientific approach or contact the lab.