Standards for Synthetic Biology: Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL)

Data Standards are important in the life sciences to maximise the opportunities for sharing and reuse of data. Data standards are also necessary in synthetic biology, both for the sharing of designs of synthetic systems, and for the exchange of experimental data relating to the behaviour of synthetic biological systems once implemented.

In this talk I will present an overview of the importance of standards in synthetic biology and discuss Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), a data standard for capturing designs for synthetic biology. I will show how the standard has developed and briefly introduce some tools that use the standard for data storage and exchange.