Abstract
Contextual data collected concurrently with molecular samples are critical to the use of metagenomics in the fields of marine biodiversity, bioinformatics and biotechnology. We present here Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (M2B3) standards for “Reporting” and “Serving” data. The M2B3 Reporting Standard (1) describes minimal mandatory and recommended contextual information for a marine microbial sample obtained in the epipelagic zone, (2) includes meaningful information for researchers in the oceanographic, biodiversity and molecular disciplines, and (3) can easily be adopted by any marine laboratory with minimum sampling resources. The M2B3 Service Standard defines a software interface through which these data can be discovered and explored in data repositories. The M2B3 Standards were developed by the European project Micro B3, funded under 7th Framework Programme “Ocean of Tomorrow”, and were first used with the Ocean Sampling Day initiative. We believe that these standards have value in broader marine science.
Highlights
An immense wealth of genetic, functional and morphological diversity in marine ecosystems remains unexplored, offering the potential for substantial scientific and biotechnological discoveries
Marine Microbial Biodiversity (M2B3) Reporting Standard We have developed the M2B3 Reporting Standard to support data collection and dissemination for those involved in marine microbial sampling
Compliance with the standard ensures that the collected data can be correctly directed to and stored in their respective domain-specific data archives, which are the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) for molecular data and Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science (PANGAEA) for environmental data and morphology-based biodiversity data
Summary
An immense wealth of genetic, functional and morphological diversity in marine ecosystems remains unexplored, offering the potential for substantial scientific and biotechnological discoveries. Describes the scientific context/ interest of the sampling activity This information is useful to generate a short abstract as part of the data set citation. The project addresses interdisciplinary needs in marine ecosystems biology and biotechnology by considering established best practice within the disciplines and deriving practical least-change means to align practices. Recognising that it is non-trivial to influence deeply-rooted working practices established over decades, we have delivered an extensive programme of workshop-based discussions amongst representatives of the disciplines [22,23]. Date and time when the sampling event started and ended, e.g. each CTD cast, net tow, or bucket collection is a distinct event.
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