title: The Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) provides a community standard for communicating designs in synthetic biology.
abstract: The re-use of previously validated designs is critical to the evolution of synthetic biology from a research discipline to an engineering practice. Here we describe the Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), a proposed data standard for exchanging designs within the synthetic biology community. SBOL represents synthetic biology designs in a community-driven, formalized format for exchange between software tools, research groups and commercial service providers. The SBOL Developers Group has implemented SBOL as an XML/RDF serialization and provides software libraries and specification documentation to help developers implement SBOL in their own software. We describe early successes, including a demonstration of the utility of SBOL for information exchange between several different software tools and repositories from both academic and industrial partners. As a community-driven standard, SBOL will be updated as synthetic biology evolves to provide specific capabilities for different aspects of the synthetic biology workflow.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical and Health Informatics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Michal
authors.identifier: 0000000283928183
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Galdzicki
authors.affiliation: Synthetic Biology Unit, Life Technologies, Carlsbad, California, USA.
authors.forename: Kevin P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Clancy
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oberortner
authors.affiliation: School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pocock
authors.affiliation: Autodesk Research, Autodesk, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors.forename: Jacqueline Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Quinn
authors.affiliation: Autodesk Research, Autodesk, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors.forename: Cesar A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
authors.affiliation: Bioengineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Roehner
authors.affiliation: Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
authors.forename: Mandy L
authors.identifier: 0000000247785744
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Adam
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
authors.forename: J Christopher
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Bryan A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Bartley
authors.affiliation: Raytheon BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Beal
authors.affiliation: Autodesk Research, Autodesk, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors.forename: Deepak
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chandran
authors.affiliation: Fuels Synthesis Division, Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), Berkeley, California, USA.
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Densmore
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Drew
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Endy
authors.affiliation: IRIC, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Raik
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Grünberg
authors.affiliation: School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hallinan
authors.affiliation: Fuels Synthesis Division, Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), Berkeley, California, USA.
authors.forename: Nathan J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Hillson
authors.affiliation: Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Molecular Tools Laboratory, Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, California, USA.
authors.forename: Allan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kuchinsky
authors.affiliation: Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lux
authors.affiliation: School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
authors.forename: Goksel
authors.identifier: 0000000224547188
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Misirli
authors.affiliation: Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
authors.forename: Jean
authors.identifier: 0000000176496127
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Peccoud
authors.affiliation: Fuels Synthesis Division, Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), Berkeley, California, USA.
authors.forename: Hector A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Plahar
authors.affiliation: Clark & Parsia, Arlington, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Evren
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sirin
authors.affiliation: Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Guy-Bart
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Stan
authors.affiliation: DNA2.0, Menlo Park, California, USA.
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Villalobos
authors.affiliation: School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
authors.forename: Anil
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wipat
authors.affiliation: Biomedical and Health Informatics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: John H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Gennari
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Chris J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Herbert M
authors.identifier: 0000000236596817
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Sauro
mesh_terms: D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D038622:Internationality; D012015:Reference Standards; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards*; D012984:Software / Q000592:standards*; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000592:standards*; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled