The Marine Research Centre, through Ecimat and its participation in the European Network of Marine Biological Stations (EMBRC-ERIC), participates together with 12 other European research infrastructures in a H2020 project called EOSC-LIFE (European Strategy for Research Infrastructures). These 13 R&D institutions in the field of health and food are pooling their knowledge and efforts to create an open and collaborative digital space for life sciences in the cloud, which will be the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The project has a total budget of 23.7 million euros and is coordinated by Elixir, an intergovernmental organization that brings together life sciences resources from across Europe.
Niklas Blomberg, Director of Elixir and overall coordinator of the project, explains that EOSC-Life will bring together the resources, tools, skills and experiences needed to transform the fragmented landscape of research data into an open space for digital biology. “Our ultimate goal is to maximize the collective potential of ESFRI (European Strategy for Research Infrastructures) biomedical research infrastructures and the researchers who use them. By the end of this project, EOSC-Life will be established as the new standard for digital biology in Europe,” accessible to the continent’s 500,000 biological scientists.
Within the framework of this continental consortium, the work team, with Jesús Souza Troncoso as IP, focuses on data protection and the privacy and traceability of marine resource samples, in accordance with the legal framework established by the Nagoya Protocol.
For locatable, accessible, interoperable and reusable biological sciences
The launch of this project responds to the need to keep European life sciences at the forefront of global advances. In this sense, the entities involved in EOSC-Life emphasize that in order to deepen the understanding of life and disease, “it is necessary that the data, digital services and advanced facilities, vital for life sciences research, are locatable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR)”. Thus, with the launch of this European node, FAIR data and services improve the reproducibility of biomedical research, drive new scientific discoveries and allow any researcher in Europe and around the world to access and use them.
The University of Vigo ensures compliance with the Nagoya Protocol
The magnitude of this project to make biological data available in the cloud presents a series of difficulties, not only in the technical and IT field, but also in relation to the protection of personal data, privacy and traceability. It is in this aspect that the participation of the University of Vigo, together with the University of the Basque Country, both through the EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Centre), the only one of the thirteen partners in the project related to marine science, is focused. Belén Martín Míguez, responsible for the participation of Ecimat in the EMBRC, explains that the participation of UVigo and the UPV/EHU stems from their extensive experience in the application of the Nagoya Protocol in the management of marine resources and its objective is that biological data can be “in the cloud” while respecting the ABS or Nagoya Protocol legal framework. This regulation requires that, throughout the entire chain from sampling to making the data available, it is necessary to collect and maintain information on the geographical origin of the sample and on the permits obtained in that process.
Thus, Spanish institutions are participating in two work packages. The first focuses on the development of a data policy that takes into account the need to ensure the traceability of biological samples throughout their use process, in compliance with the legislation implemented in each country within the framework of the Nagoya Protocol. “The fundamental point of the protocol is that it recognizes the sovereignty of countries over genetic resources collected in their territory, regardless of where they are used. “Therefore, it is necessary that, little by little, the institutions that are involved in the collection, transport, use and generation of information from these genetic resources put in place mechanisms that ensure that the country of origin is known throughout the entire “journey” of the resource. Within work area 4 of the project, a workshop will also be organized in which representatives of the different institutions involved in all the steps of this ‘journey’ will participate. With their contributions, explains Martín Míguez, “we will propose a series of recommendations on aspects to incorporate into data policies”.
The second area of the project in which UVigo is involved is closely related to the previous one, but with a more technical component, trying to propose concrete solutions to put these data policies into practice. It involves developing an “origin model” for all the biological data considered in the project. We collaborate with other colleagues who have a more bioinformatics profile and are selecting and proposing mandatory metadata using the .eml (ecological metadata library) language”. This metadata, the researcher points out, must accompany the data on genetic resources and will have to be progressively incorporated into the databases of marine resources that currently exist throughout Europe. “This will mean that, throughout the chain of use of a genetic resource, the last result obtained can be traced back to the original biological sample from which it was inferred”. For this task, explains Martín Míguez, the University of Vigo collaborates with VLIZ (Flanders Institute of Marine Sciences) and with BBMRI-ERIC (European Research Infrastructure for Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources, medical sciences).
The research activity of the CIM-UVigo and the dissemination and transfer activities of the Center have the support of the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through their co-financing under the FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020 Operational Program.
Source: DUVI
