New initiatives will help scientists compare data more easily
Scientists around the world will soon be able to share and compare detailed molecular data more easily, thanks to initiatives by two international groups of scientists. Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the groups present guidelines on the information that researchers should provide when reporting molecular interactions (MIMIx - the minimum information required for reporting a molecular interaction experiment) and proteomics (MIAPE - the minimum information about a proteomics experiment). Vast amounts of research are being conducted in these fields. However, data are often reported in different formats or even simply as free text. Furthermore, many reports lack information which is needed for others to fully understand the experiment, and all too often molecules are not clearly identified. 'The absence of key pieces of information can lead to both misinterpretation of the paper by scientists and to a time-consuming, error-prone attempt to derive the missing information by a database curation team,' the MIMIx team writes. The new guidelines were drawn up in consultation with the scientific community, and were developed with two key criteria in mind. On the one hand, they want scientists to provide enough information for other scientists to be able to understand and interpret the data fully. On the other hand, the procedure should not be so burdensome that scientists would avoid using it. 'Through the community-wide uptake of agreed minimum reporting standards, we can all benefit from easier identification and use of information that is most relevant to our own areas of work,' commented Henning Hermjakob of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute, who was an author on both papers. 'This is the next step in providing freely accessible data repositories of the highest possible quality.' MIAPE's guidelines consist of a set of modules relating to specific technologies or groups of technologies. MIMIx is the first module of MIAPE to be finalised and published, and others have been submitted for publication. Among other things, the MIMIx guidelines on molecular interactions call for information on the experimental methods, the names of all molecules involved in the interaction, the species of origin of the molecule and the biological role of the molecule in the interaction. Ultimately the use of minimum information standards will benefit a range of actors, the researchers note. 'Adherence to these reporting guidelines will result in publications of increased clarity and usefulness to the scientific community and will support the rapid, systematic capture of molecular interaction data in public databases, thereby improving access to valuable interaction data,' writes the MIMIx team. According to the MIAPE team, the standards will facilitate the sharing of data with collaborators, avoid the risk of information loss through staff turnover and support the assessment of results that may have been generated some time ago. 'In this age of genome- and proteome-scale experiments, the need to standardise the content of reports of biological experiments is evident if we are to extract full value from our activities,' the MIAPE team concludes. 'It is our hope that this document and the modules accompanying it will begin to fulfil this need for proteomics researchers and for the proteomics community as a whole, increasing the value of both individual pieces of work and of the general, diverse corpus to which so many contribute.'