Meeting attendees identified priorities and made suggestions and policy recommendations on these and other issues. Priorities and Issues Major priorities identified by the group included the development of a reference genome map and sequence database and databases of individual variation and functional expression. Sequence data should be continuous and annotated, linked to maps, and structured to allow all conceivable data-supported queries. Data should be updated and curated by editors. WIT, KEGG, and EcoCyc.
Much current data are highly heterogeneous in format, organization, quality, and content.
This is not surprising, given the wide diversity of genome-research investigators who are generating the data. An identified priority is to comprehensively capture raw, summary, or processed data in standard, well-structured formats using controlled vocabularies. Additionally, databases must be integrated and linked. Intelligent consensus standards should be defined and implemented by academia, government, and industry working together. Today, industry standards are very distinct from the few that exist in the genome project.