The Genomic Standards ConsortiumThe Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC), an international initiative including representatives from a range of major sequencing and bioinformatics centres, is an initiative working towards richer descriptions of our collection of genomes and metagenomes. The GSC group is led by Dawn Field from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. In biology, the genome of an organism is its whole hereditary information and is encoded in the DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA). Metagenomics (also termed Environmental Genomics, Ecogenomics or Community Genomics) is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples. Established in September 2005, the GSC includes representatives from a range of major sequencing and bioinformatics centres (including NCBI, EMBL, DDBJ, JCVI, JGI, EBI, Sanger, FIG and a range of research institutions). All of these computational researchers want to improve the richness of reporting for the purpose of enabling higher quality computational analyses. This includes the ability to build better interfaces to (meta)genomic databases that offer rich options for sorting, searching, filtering, and processing groups of (meta) genomes. The goal of GSC is to promote mechanisms for standardising the description of (meta)genomes, including the exchange and integration of (meta)genomic data. Major organisations such as The NIEeS and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) have hosted recent GSC workshops. The Natural Environment Research Council (external link) provided funds for coordination and infrastructure building activities within the GSC. For more information on the GSC contact Dr Dawn Field, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, e-mail: dfield@ceh.ac.uk |
Recent developmentsThe Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC), has created a new guideline for describing genomes and metagenomes. The guideline, ‘Minimum Information about a Genome Sequence’ (MIGS), is published was the May 2008 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. The new guideline is one of a number of emerging minimum information (MI) standards. Increased use of ultra-high-throughput sequencing technologies has led to the number and pace of genomic and metagenomic sequencing projects growing rapidly. Common standards such as MIGS are therefore increasingly vital to scientific progress, as groups from around the world look to share their data. MIGS describes the genomes of eukaryotes, bacteria, archaea, plasmids, organelles, viruses and the communities of genomes found in metagenomic samples. The GSC expects MIGS to be stable enough to be used now but is open to further modification: for example, as sequencing technologies change. Additional linksMore information on the Genomic Standards Consortium and other genomics activities can be found on the following websites: |
