Molecular biology

The Investigation/Study/Assay (ISA) tab-delimited (TAB) format is a general purpose framework with which to collect and communicate complex metadata (i.e. sample characteristics, technologies used, type of measurements made) from 'omics-based' experiments employing a combination of technologies.

Created by core developers from the University of Oxford, ISA-TAB v1.0 was released in November 2008.

MIxS is a superset of metadata elements that can be used to compile minimum information checklists for reporting sequencing data. It was developed by the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) as an overarching framework that could act as a single entry point for all their minimum information checklists (as reported in Nature Biotechnology).

MIxS includes the technology-specific checklists from the previous MIGS and MIMS standards (for genomes and metagenomes respectively), provides a way of introducing additional checklists such as MIMARKS (for marker sequences), and also allows annotation of sample data using environmental packages.

Protein Data Bank archive (PDB) is the single worldwide archival repository of information about the 3D structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies, managed by the Worldwide PDB (wwPDB). The PDB Exchange Dictionary (PDBx) is used by the wwPDB to define data content for deposition, annotation and archiving of PDB entries. PDBx incorporates the community standard metadata representation, the Macromolecular Crystallographic Information Framework (mmCIF), orginally developed under the auspices of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). PDBx has been extended by the wwPDB to include descriptions of other experimental methods that produce 3D macromolecular structure models such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, 3D Electron Microscopy and Tomography.

Some repositories have decided that current standards do not fit their metadata needs, and so have created their own requirements.