Survey of Bioinformatics Standards

Jorge Contreras, Associate Professor of Law, American University - Washington College of Law

10/01/2012
(Original Publish Date: 3/1/2012)

The rapid growth of bioinformatics research over the past two decades has led to a surge of interest in the development of interoperability and compatibility standards for bioinformatics applications. These range from standards for genome annotation and controlled vocabularies (ontologies) to data formats and search engine integration. A variety of organizations are involved in these standards-development activities, from large, established standards bodies such as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) to broad-based bioinformatics industry associations such as the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) to narrowly-focused efforts such as the Proteomics Standards Initiative (PSI) and the Functional Genomics Investigation Ontology (FuGO) project.