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Biomolecule Naming Service

Thu, 2004-06-10 11:24 — Neil

From the latest issue of The Scientist (free registration), I discovered BNS, the Biological Naming Service.
Looks interesting - would our resident expert (he knows who he is) like to comment?


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Mon, 2004-06-14 18:41 — Greg

Identity

There are two main issues associated with identifying a resource (biological or other). The first is defining a scheme for minting unique identifiers, the second is: once you have the identifier what can you do with it (i.e. can you retrieve a representation of the resource being identified).

The current situation we have in the biological sciences is that every data provider has designed their own identification scheme; no universal system exists. And no resolution service exists for determining the equivalence of identifiers or pointing to the location of a representation for the resource being identified. The BNS is trying to solve the second problem, the LSID proposal is trying to solve the first (however part of the LSID proposal includes a resolution service).

I could go on at length about the technical merits, or lack of, for both proposed solutions. However the issue of which solution to adopt is well and truly out of our hands: the OMG has already blessed the final LSID specification (backed by IBM, EBI, IC3 et. al.).