BioWes – From Design of Experiment, through Protocol to Repository, Control, Standardization and Back-Tracking

Abstract

The amount of data produced by current experiments in systems biology is enormous. Some database and software support for biology experiments exist but usually deal just with some part of data and metadata management. Primary data are only occasionally analyzed in-depth and shared. Studies showed that cost of data sharing is cheaper than experimental work. Experimental costs are several orders higher than data. Therefore, being up to date is a worldwide problem for all users of biology applications. In practice, the problem extends to general fields such as knowledge mining, experiment quality and repeatability, and the philosophical epistemology of biological problems.

The BioWes project is inspired by several similar projects that try to solve a substantial contemporary problem of sharing big amount of experimental data. There are several projects that offer the solution for data sharing (for different types of data). The problem is that the amount data produced by experimentalists is constantly increasing and the speed of internet will always be a step behind. The effective and easier way how to share experimental data between researchers is to share metadata. Metadata means the overall knowledge about the experiment that consist of complex information of experimental procedure and knowledge that can be extracted from data automatically or manually by post-processing. The data itself is meaningless without any additional knowledge concerning the experiment. There is no project that can offer the whole concept of experimental data sharing and data processing based on the sharing of knowledge.