Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG)

The overall objective of the Animals, Samples and Assays Working Committee (ASA) is to achieve and share standardized protocols for adequate sample collection, storage, processing, and respective assays as required for FAANG core assays. Standardization of the different steps involved is the essential prerequisite for integration of multiple datasets.

Foster potential collaborations in order to avoid redundancies and optimize synergies in terms of sample collection.
Set-up and standardize assays to be carried out on the same tissues/species, in order to obtain suitable datasets for the work of the FAANG "Metadata and Sharing Working group" and "Bioinformatics and Analysis Working Group".
Contribute to the organized scientific dissemination to the whole community (FAANG Communication Working Group).

Group’s activities

Discussions among members take place i) over email via the faang-sample@animalgenome.org mailing list.

ASA members can meet by video-conference (Zoom) around specific topics upon members’ request to co-chairs (Giuffra, Zhou).

Sharing protocols to FAANG FTP site

The FAANG sample and experiment metadata specification (see M&DA webpage) requires your protocols to be publicly available. It is best these are hosted in a location which will be available in the long term so locations such as lab pages are inadvisable as web addresses change and hosting goes away.

FAANG hosts protocols on its FTP site protocols directory (ftp://ftp.faang.ebi.ac.uk/ftp/protocols/). In the ‘Samples’ sub-directory you will find existing protocols in use for sample collection and treatment suited for long term storing; in the ‘Assays’ sub-directory you will find protocols in use for FAANG assays optimized on specific cells or tissues.

Protocols by definition evolve in time, thus improved versions (i.e. yielding datasets of better quality) should be uploaded as often as necessary. Therefore, each protocol on the FTP ‘Sample’ and ‘Assay’ directories includes a date stamp, so if protocols are subsequently updated then you can submit the same protocol name with a different date stamp to indicate an updated version. Any modification of an existing file will be recorded as a new file with an updated timestamp.

For the coordinated improvement of existing protocols, as well as to exchange views, questions and related draft files on new protocols you are testing, we strongly recommend discussion via email to keep everyone informed of progress (faang-sample@animalgenome.org).

Animals, Samples and Assays (ASA) Committee

Members