Max
08-20-2004, 12:28 PM
Committee Aims to Develop Bioinformatics Standards
By M.L. Baker
August 20, 2004
STANFORD, Calif.-Developing standards for describing biological data may not be glamorous, but the lack of standards undermines researchers' productivity, said one researcher at the first meeting of the Bioinformatics Standards Committee here on Thursday.
"I want to know what the fields mean and I want to know that everybody else has the same concept of what the fields mean," said Eugene Myers, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "My blood boils when I have to write yet another parser for yet another data set," he said, describing time wasted and projects not attempted because of incompatible and inconsistent data sets. These and other issues could be ameliorated by broad standards, said the former industry leader, who is famous for his work to speed genome sequencing at Celera Genomics and for developing tools widely used by molecular biologists, including Blast and Anrep.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1638370,00.asp
By M.L. Baker
August 20, 2004
STANFORD, Calif.-Developing standards for describing biological data may not be glamorous, but the lack of standards undermines researchers' productivity, said one researcher at the first meeting of the Bioinformatics Standards Committee here on Thursday.
"I want to know what the fields mean and I want to know that everybody else has the same concept of what the fields mean," said Eugene Myers, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "My blood boils when I have to write yet another parser for yet another data set," he said, describing time wasted and projects not attempted because of incompatible and inconsistent data sets. These and other issues could be ameliorated by broad standards, said the former industry leader, who is famous for his work to speed genome sequencing at Celera Genomics and for developing tools widely used by molecular biologists, including Blast and Anrep.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1638370,00.asp