Minimum information about a biofilm experiment (MIABiE): standards for reporting experiments and data on sessile microbial communities living at interfaces.
The minimum information about a biofilm experiment (MIABiE) initiative has arisen from the need to find an adequate and scientifically sound way to control the quality of the documentation accompanying the public deposition of biofilm-related data, particularly those obtained using high-throughput devices and techniques. Thereby, the MIABiE consortium has initiated the identification and organization of a set of modules containing the minimum information that needs to be reported to guarantee the interpretability and independent verification of experimental results and their integration with knowledge coming from other fields. MIABiE does not intend to propose specific standards on how biofilms experiments should be performed, because it is acknowledged that specific research questions require specific conditions which may deviate from any standardization. Instead, MIABiE presents guidelines about the data to be recorded and published in order for the procedure and results to be easily and unequivocally interpreted and reproduced. Overall, MIABiE opens up the discussion about a number of particular areas of interest and attempts to achieve a broad consensus about which biofilm data and metadata should be reported in scientific journals in a systematic, rigorous and understandable manner.
Departamento de Informática, Universidade de Vigo, ESEI - Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Informática, Ourense, Spain; IBB - Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Anália
A
Lourenço
Tom
T
Coenye
Darla M
DM
Goeres
Gianfranco
G
Donelli
Andreia S
AS
Azevedo
Howard
H
Ceri
Filipa L
FL
Coelho
Hans-Curt
HC
Flemming
Talis
T
Juhna
Susana P
SP
Lopes
Rosário
R
Oliveira
Antonio
A
Oliver
Mark E
ME
Shirtliff
Ana M
AM
Sousa
Paul
P
Stoodley
Maria Olivia
MO
Pereira
Nuno F
NF
Azevedo
D018441:Biofilms; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004282:Documentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D012106:Research / Q000592:standards*; D012107:Research Design; D012984:Software; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled
biofilm; data interchange; data standardization; machine-readable formats; microbial communities