New Stand­ards in Biotechnology

Mod­ern bio­tech­no­logy is a rap­idly grow­ing field of research. World­wide, numer­ous labor­at­or­ies and research groups are pro­du­cing huge amounts of data that they ana­lyze with com­puters and then use to devel­op com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­els. There are cur­rently few gen­er­ally bind­ing stand­ards for the labor­at­ory exper­i­ments and the com­puter-aided pro­cessing of the res­ults. ISO intends to change this by estab­lish­ing stand­ards for the format­ting, trans­fer, and integ­ra­tion of the data and mod­els gen­er­ated by dif­fer­ent meth­ods. Such con­sist­ent stand­ards would be of high value for indus­tri­al, agri­cul­tur­al, and med­ic­al applic­a­tions. Dur­ing the last meet­ing in Shen­zhen, China, the ISO Tech­nic­al Com­mit­tee ISO/TC 276 Bio­tech­no­logy foun­ded a new work­ing group for ​„Data pro­cessing and integ­ra­tion“. The object­ive is to stand­ard­ize inter­faces between dif­fer­ent data formats in order to facil­it­ate the exchange and com­bin­a­tion of data and com­puter mod­els. With this aim, the com­mit­tee will integ­rate ​“de facto” stand­ards cur­rently used in sci­ence. Mar­tin Gole­biewski, from the Heidel­berg Insti­tute for The­or­et­ic­al Stud­ies (HITS), Ger­many, has been appoin­ted con­vener of the new ISO work­ing group. He is already coordin­at­or of the Ger­man NORM­SYS-Pro­ject which focuses on stand­ard­iz­ing mod­els and data in sys­tems bio­logy. The pro­ject is fun­ded by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Energy and is car­ried out in col­lab­or­a­tion with the Uni­ver­sity of Pots­dam and the Ber­lin-based start-up busi­ness LifeGlim­mer GmbH, with the aim of bring­ing sys­tem bio­lo­gists in aca­demia and industry togeth­er to agree on stand­ards. ​“The new ISO work­ing group will help us to facil­it­ate the trans­fer of sci­entif­ic res­ults into indus­tri­al applic­a­tions by estab­lish­ing inter­na­tion­al stand­ards for data and com­puter mod­els,” says Mar­tin Gole­biewski. ​“As the sec­ret­ari­at of this com­mit­tee is at the Ger­man Insti­tute for Stand­ard­iz­a­tion (DIN), and experts from Europe, Japan, the US and China have already joined it, this effort will strengthen the rela­tion­ship between research ini­ti­at­ives in Ger­many and related efforts in oth­er coun­tries world­wide.” Inter­ested sci­ent­ists are invited to par­ti­cip­ate in the ini­ti­at­ive through their nation­al com­mit­tees. For fur­ther inform­a­tion, please send an email to martin.golebiewski(at)h‑its.org or bjoern.hermes(at)din.de. HITS The Heidel­berg Insti­tute for The­or­et­ic­al Stud­ies (HITS gGmbH) was estab­lished by SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira and his found­a­tion, the ​“Klaus Tschira Stif­tung”, as a private, non-profit research insti­tute. HITS con­ducts basic research involving the pro­cessing, struc­tur­ing and ana­lys­is of large amounts of data in the nat­ur­al sci­ences, math­em­at­ics and com­puter sci­ence. The research top­ics range from molecu­lar bio­logy to astro­phys­ics. Share­hold­ers of HITS are the ​“HITS-Stif­tung”, Heidel­berg Uni­ver­sity and the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT). HITS cooper­ates with uni­ver­sit­ies and research insti­tutes, as well as with indus­tri­al part­ners. The Klaus Tschira Found­a­tion provides the major fin­an­cial sup­port for HITS through the HITS found­a­tion. The main extern­al fund­ing sources are the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research, the Ger­man Research Found­a­tion and the European Uni­on. DIN e.V. DIN is a privately organ­ized non-profit pro­vider of stand­ard­iz­a­tion ser­vices. More than 30,000 experts from industry, research, con­sumer pro­tec­tion and the pub­lic sec­tor work with DIN to devel­op mar­ket-ori­ented stand­ards and spe­cific­a­tions that pro­mote glob­al trade and innov­a­tion, assure effi­ciency and qual­ity, and help pro­tect the envir­on­ment and soci­ety as a whole. Source: idw