Over 50 collaborators at over 30 scientific organisations around the globe have agreed on a common standard that will make possible the consistent description of enormous and radically different databases compiled in fields ranging from genetics to stem cell science, to environmental studies. The collaborators were led in this effort by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) at Harvard University.
The new standard seeks to provide a way for scientists in widely disparate fields to coordinate each other's findings by allowing behind-the-scenes combination of the mountains of data produced by modern, technology driven science.
This standard-compliant data sharing effort and the establishment of its online presence, the ISA Commons - www.isacommons.org, is described in a commentary published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Genetics. The commentary is signed by all the collaborators.
ISA Commons is also being used at Harvard Medical School (HMS) by the HMS LINCS (Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures) project, led by Professors Peter Sorger and Timothy Mitchison.
The work was funded, by among others, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the US National Institutes of Health, and the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
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