title: Standards for systems biology.
abstract: High-throughput technologies are generating large amounts of complex data that have to be stored in databases, communicated to various data analysis tools and interpreted by scientists. Data representation and communication standards are needed to implement these steps efficiently. Here we give a classification of various standards related to systems biology and discuss various aspects of standardization in life sciences in general. Why are some standards more successful than others, what are the prerequisites for a standard to succeed and what are the possible pitfalls?
authors.affiliation: European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton CB10 1SD, UK. brazma@ebi.ac.uk
authors.forename: Alvis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brazma
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krestyaninova
authors.forename: Ugis
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sarkans
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D006113:United Kingdom