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| Standardisation: the most difficult flower to grow. |
The PSI (Proteomics Standard Initiative) 2014
Meeting was held this year in Frankfurt (13-17 of April) and I can say I’m now
part of this history. First, I will try to describe with a couple of sentences (for
sure I will fai) the incredible venue, the Schloss Reinhartshausen Kempinski. When I
saw for the first time the hotel, first thing came to my mind was those films from
the 50s. Everything was elegant, classic, sophisticated - from the decoration to
a small latch. The food was incredible and the service is first class from the
moment you set foot on the front step and throughout the whole stay.
Standardization is the process of developing
and implementing technical standards. Standardization can help to maximize
compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality. It can also
facilitate commoditization of formerly custom processes. In bioinformatics, the standardization of file formats, vocabulary, and
resources is a job that all of us appreciate but for several reasons nobody
wants to do. First of all, standardization in bioinformatics means that you
need to organize and merge different experimental and in-silico pipelines to have a common way to represent the
information. In proteomics for example, you can use different sample
preparation, combined with different fractionation techniques and different
mass spectrometers; and finally using different search engines and
post-processing tools. The diversity and possible combinations is needed
because allow to explore different solutions for complex problems. (Standarization
in Proteomics: From raw data to metadata files).
