Reporting Structure for Biological Investigations Working Groups (RSBI WGs) - Toxicogenomics (TWG), Environmental Genomics (EGWG), Nutrigenomics (NWG)
Standardization Of Multi-OMICS Investigations
RSBI represents communities where efforts are already underway to promote reporting standards and to develop databases for storing biological investigations employing multiple OMICS technologies.
These communities have joined forces to support and contribute to several projects and initiatives developing standards for the annotation and the exchange of experimental data and metadata.
Collaborations
RSBI works in the spirit that no one group or community can solve the challenges of developing multi-omics standards. Collaboration is necessary and fundamental to progress in this field.
Although the RSBI WGs are under the MGED Society umbrella, it has always been the intent of these groups to work in the wider functional genomics context. The RSBI WGs coordinators are directly participating in the HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative (PSI), Metabolomics Standards Initiative (MSI), Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) and many others, including regulatory-driven efforts working to define standards for data submission to regulators.
Specifically, RSBI WGs are contributing to activities in the areas of checklist development, semantics and data modelling through the efforts of the large Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations (MIBBI) , Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) and Functional Genomics Experiment Object Model (FuGE) projects by feeding in case studies and experiences from their own communities.
Only very recently, another complementary initiative has sprung up from RSBI members and a growing number of other communities: ISA-TAB is a common tabular framework for presenting experimental metadata and serve to as a user-friendly presentation layer for XML-based formats, such as FuGE-MLs (via an XSL transformation).
RSBI aims to be fully open and inclusive and the WGs coordinators will continue outreaching to other efforts.
Read our latest papers:
- The First RSBI (ISA-TAB) Workshop: "Can a Simple Format Work for Complex Studies?"
Sansone SA, Rocca-Serra P, Brandizi M, Brazma A, Field D, Fostel J, Garrow AG, Gilbert J, Goodsaid F, Hardy N, Jones P, Lister A, Miller M, Morrison N, Rayner T, Sklyar N, Taylor C, Tong W, Warner G, Wiemann S; and Members of the RSBI Working Group. OMICS. 2008 Jun;12(2):143-9. - A strategy capitalizing on synergies - The Reporting Structure for Biological Investigation (RSBI) working group.
Sansone SA, Rocca-Serra P, Tong W, Fostel J, Morrison N, Jones A. OMICS 2006, 2(10):164-171.
Part of A special issue on data standards
To join the RSBI WGs, contact the coordinators from here.
Leading Groups
- Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition (CISBAN)
- EMBL The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)
- European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO)
- FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), Center for Toxicoinformatics
- NERC Environmental Bioinformatics Centre (NEBC)
- NIEHS National Center for Toxicogenomics (NCT)
