Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Joana Paupério (joanap@ebi.ac.uk)
Received: 03 Aug 2022 | Published: 03 Aug 2022
© 2022 Joana Paupério, Josephine Burgin, Toni Gabaldón, Jerry Lanfear, Robert Waterhouse, Guy Cochrane
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Paupério J, Burgin J, Gabaldón T, Lanfear J, Waterhouse RM, Cochrane G (2022) Towards Connecting Molecular Data and the Biodiversity Research Community: An ENA and ELIXIR biodiversity community perspective. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 6: e91204. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.6.91204
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Global and regional efforts for generating molecular sequencing data are fundamental to characterise and monitor the Earth’s biodiversity. However, exploiting the full potential of molecular data for biodiversity monitoring and conservation is still a challenge. There is still the need to fully connect the generation and archiving of sequence data with other biodiversity infrastructures, thereby promoting Findability, Accessability, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR) of data.
Here we present the ongoing activities and future plans of the European Life-Science Infrastructure (ELIXIR) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory European Bioinformatics Institute’s (EMBL-EBI) European Nucleotide Archive (ENA, the European node of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration - INSDC) towards an enriched set of sequence data connected to the wider biodiversity research community.
ELIXIR has an emerging Biodiversity Community that was originally created as a focus group in 2019, to better align the work in biodiversity across the ELIXIR Nodes and with global initiatives in the biodiversity domain. This group has been working on understanding the capabilities, interests and ongoing projects that exist across the Nodes, developing connections with external partners in the biodiversity area (e.g. Global Biodiversity Information Facilitiy, GBIF; LifeWatch Eric) and developing a longer term strategy for support of biodiversity by ELIXIR. A recent opinion piece by the group (
ELIXIR and EMBL-EBI are involved in several biodiversity genomics initiatives, including the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), the Darwin Tree of Life Project (DToL), the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA), and the BIOSCAN Europe, where support is being provided to data curation, submission and visibility and in the definition of standards for the associated metadata (e.g.
These projects and community efforts are contributing to improving metadata standards and pushing the development of tools and workflows to support enriched metadata and increased linkage with other biodiversity infrastructures. Overall, we need to continue to work towards a strong foundation of interlinked knowledge to be able to effectively respond to global challenges such as biodiversity loss and ecosystem change.
data linkage, data management, sequencing data
Joana Paupério
TDWG 2022
This work was funded by ELIXIR, the research infrastructure for life-science data. BiCIKL project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action under grant agreement No 101007492
BiCIKL - Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library