Standards recommendations for the Earth BioGenome Project
Mara Lawniczak, Richard Durbin, Paul Flicek, Kerstin Lindblad‐Toh, Xiaofeng Wei, John M. Archibald, William J. Baker, Katherine Belov, Mark Blaxter, Tomàs Marquès‐Bonet, Anna K. Childers, Jonathan A. Coddington, Keith A. Crandall, Andrew J. Crawford, Robert Davey, Federica Di Palma, Qi Fang, Wilfried Haerty, Neil Hall, Katharina J. Hoff, Kerstin Howe, Erich D. Jarvis, Warren E. Johnson, Rebecca N. Johnson, Paul Kersey, Xin Liu, Jose V. Lopez, Eugene W. Myers, Olga Vinnere Pettersson, Adam M. Phillippy, Monica F. Poelchau, Kim D. Pruitt, Arang Rhie, Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Sunil Kumar Sahu, Nicholas A. Salmon, Pamela S. Soltis, David Swarbreck, Françoise Thibaud‐Nissen, Sibo Wang, Jill Wegrzyn, Guojie Zhang, He Zhang, Harris A. Lewin, Stephen Richards
Abstract
A global international initiative, such as the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), requires both agreement and coordination on standards to ensure that the collective effort generates rapid progress toward its goals. To this end, the EBP initiated five technical standards committees comprising volunteer members from the global genomics scientific community: Sample Collection and Processing, Sequencing and Assembly, Annotation, Analysis, and IT and Informatics. The current versions of the resulting standards documents are available on the EBP website, with the recognition that opportunities, technologies, and challenges may improve or change in the future, requiring flexibility for the EBP to meet its goals. Here, we describe some highlights from the proposed standards, and areas where additional challenges will need to be met.