A new ELIXIR Focus Group has been created in the area of domestic animal genomics and phenomics research. The group will promote and align tools, databases, standards and best practices, and consider the case for the formation of an ELIXIR Community.
Along with the recently formed Pathogens Data Focus Group, the Domestic Animals Genome and Phenome Focus Group advances the ELIXIR Programme focus area “Biodiversity, Food Security and Pathogens”.
The new Focus Group will support genotype to phenotype analysis for farmed and companion animal species by connecting researchers and data scientists across species and countries and developing a coordinated, open and standardised data life cycle.
This will be achieved by pursuing five goals:
- Promote the Focus Group activities, build membership and scope future needs.
- Explore data and technology solutions for addressing key issues in behaviour, health and infectious diseases, metabolism and nutritional efficiency, and the preservation of genetic diversity.
- Develop data standards, workflows and visualisations in the developing areas of pangenomics, functional genomics, genome editing, phenotyping and biorepositories.
- Develop FAIR data management guidelines, standards and ontologies and promote best practices in data coordination and archiving.
- Organise training and knowledge transfer events.
The group is led by Emily Clark (ELIXIR UK), Martien Groenen (ELIXIR Netherlands), Catherine Larzul (ELIXIR France) and Peter Harrison (EMBL-EBI, stepping down 13th June 2024), with Physilia Chua as the ELIXIR Hub Liaison.