title: A strategy capitalizing on synergies: the Reporting Structure for Biological Investigation (RSBI) working group.
abstract: In this article we present the Reporting Structure for Biological Investigation (RSBI), a working group under the Microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) Society umbrella. RSBI brings together several communities to tackle the challenges associated with integrating data and representing complex biological investigations, employing multiple OMICS technologies. Currently, RSBI includes environmental genomics, nutrigenomics and toxicogenomics communities, where independent activities are underway to develop databases and establish data communication standards within their respective domains. The RSBI working group has been conceived as a "single point of focus" for these communities, conforming to general accepted view that duplication and incompatibility should be avoided where possible. This endeavour has aimed to synergize insular solutions into one common terminology between biologically driven standardisation efforts and has also resulted in strong collaborations and shared understanding between those in the technological domain. Through extensive liaisons with many standards efforts, several threads have been woven with the hope that ultimately technology-centered standards and their specific extensions into biological domains of interest will not only stand alone, but will also be able to function together, as interchangeable modules.
authors.affiliation: EMBL-EBI, European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO), Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom. sansone@ebi.ac.uk
authors.forename: Susanna-Assunta
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Sansone
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rocca-Serra
authors.forename: Weida
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fostel
authors.forename: Norman
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Morrison
authors.forename: Andrew R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Jones
mesh_terms: D030541:Databases, Genetic / Q000592:standards*; D023281:Genomics / Q000592:standards*; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena / Q000235:genetics; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000592:standards; D012660:Semantics; D043922:Toxicogenetics / Q000592:standards