title: Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) Version 2.1.0.
abstract: Synthetic biology builds upon the techniques and successes of genetics, molecular biology, and metabolic engineering by applying engineering principles to the design of biological systems. The field still faces substantial challenges, including long development times, high rates of failure, and poor reproducibility. One method to ameliorate these problems would be to improve the exchange of information about designed systems between laboratories. The Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) has been developed as a standard to support the specification and exchange of biological design information in synthetic biology, filling a need not satisfied by other pre-existing standards. This document details version 2.1 of SBOL that builds upon version 2.0 published in last year&rsquo;s JIB special issue. In particular, SBOL 2.1 includes improved rules for what constitutes a valid SBOL document, new role fields to simplify the expression of sequence features and how components are used in context, and new best practices descriptions to improve the exchange of basic sequence topology information and the description of genetic design provenance, as well as miscellaneous other minor improvements.
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Beal
authors.forename: Robert Sidney
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Cox
authors.forename: Raik
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Grünberg
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McLaughlin
authors.forename: Tramy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: Bryan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bartley
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bissell
authors.forename: Kiri
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Clancy
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Macklin
authors.forename: Curtis
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Madsen
authors.forename: Goksel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Misirli
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oberortner
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pocock
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Roehner
authors.forename: Meher
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Samineni
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Zach
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zundel
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gennari
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.forename: Herbert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sauro
authors.forename: Anil
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wipat
mesh_terms: D011381:Programming Languages; D058615:Synthetic Biology