Briefs

NEW YORK, Sept. 6 - A working group has created a new markup language designed to make it easier for researchers to transmit and share microarray data.

That new data format, called Microarray Gene Expression Markup Language, or MAGE-ML, creates a syntax that can manage the enormous number of variables involved in microarray experiments, and provides a mutually intelligible format to permit data merges or comparisons.

Designed to be used with both commercial and spotted arrays, the language can describe microarray design, manufacturing information, experiment setup, data, and analysis results. A paper describing the format appears in Genome Biology.

The working group, a collaborative effort, includes representatives from Lion Bioscience, The Institute for Genomic Research, Rosetta Biosoftware, and the Institute for Systems Biology, among others.

The markup language project is an offshoot of the Microarray Gene Expression Data society, an ad hoc committee of microarray researchers that is struggling to impose order and create standards for the proliferating forms of array data.

Last spring, the group proposed a new "minimal information" standard that specifies what annotation information must be included with any microarray experiment, and is now trying to get that standard widely adopted.

More importantly, it can allow researchers to combine data from multiple experiments run under different conditions in different labs, said Spellman. "The hope is that it will make transporting data between places A and B that don't speak the same language possible."

For further information, see http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MAGE/mage.html