The Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) provides a community standard for communicating designs in synthetic biology
Authors: Michal Galdzicki, Kevin P Clancy, Ernst Oberortner, Matthew Pocock, Jacqueline Y Quinn, Cesar A Rodriguez, Nicholas Roehner, Mandy L Wilson, Laura Adam, J Christopher Anderson, Bryan A Bartley, Jacob Beal, Deepak Chandran, Joanna Chen, Douglas Densmore, Drew Endy, Raik Grünberg, Jennifer Hallinan, Nathan J Hillson, Jeffrey D Johnson, Allan Kuchinsky, Matthew Lux, Goksel Misirli, Jean Peccoud, Hector A Plahar, Evren Sirin, Guy-Bart Stan, Alan Villalobos, Anil Wipat, John H Gennari, Chris J Myers, Herbert M Sauro
Publication date2014/6
Journal Nature biotechnology Volume32 Issue6 Pages545
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.