Corresponding author: Gabriele Droege (
Academic editor:
The GGBN Data Portal (
In addition to genomic DNA, the development and use of high-throughput-/next-generation-sequencing (HTS formerly designated NGS) has outstripped current plans of SYNTHESYS and GGBN to join natural history collection data with DNA and tissue collection data. HTS libraries can be considered as a preparation of the genetic material of a single organism or of multiple organism (e.g. from an environmental mixed sample). From that point of view, they are the actual physical molecular representation of a specimen or sample. However, these libraries come with specific adaptors that limit their transferability to other sequencing systems. The libraries are prepared at great expense, but frequently are only used for a single project, not making use of additional useful information that could potentially be generated. To increase the potential of the HTS libraries to be used for multiple projects they have to be discoverable via published metadata. Optimally, HTS library metadata will include specific standardized keywords (by e.g. organism, HTS method etc.).
Here we present our ideas and a prototype for eDNA samples and HTS libraries based on the GGBN Data Standard (
Walter G Berendsohn
The authors thank the European Commission, the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) Global Genome Initiative for funding this work within SYNTHESYS III (312253), DFG-GGBN (GU 1109/5-1, GE 1242/13-1), DFG-DNA-Bank-Netzwerk (INST 1039/1-1, INST 17818/1-1, INST 427/1-1, INST 599/1-1), DFG-GFBio (GU 1109/3-1) and DFG-BiNHum (BE 2283/8-1).