The Marine Research Centre, through Ecimat and its participation in the European Network of Marine Biology Stations (EMBRC-ERIC), participates together with 12 other European research infrastructures in an H2020 project called EOSC-LIFE (European Strategy for Research Infrastructures).These 13 R&D institutions in the field of health and food combine 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 general coordinator of the project, explains that EOSC-Life will bring together the resources, tools, skills and necessary experiences 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 biomedical research infrastructures of ESFRI (European Strategy for Research Infrastructures) and the researchers who employ them. At the end of this project, EOSC-Life will establish itself as the new standard for digital biology in Europe”. It will be accessible to the 500,000 biological scientists on the continent.
Within the framework of this continental consortium, the work team, with Jesús Souza Troncoso as IP, focuses on traceability of samples of marine resources, in accordance with the legal framework established by the Nagoya Protocol.
For findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable biological sciences
The implementation of this project responds to the need to keep the European life sciences at the cutting edge of world progress. In this sense, the entities involved in EOSC-Life emphasize that in order to deepen the understanding of life and diseases, “it is necessary that the data, digital services and advanced facilities, vital for research in life sciences, be located, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) ”. Thus, with the launching 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
Making human and non-human biological data available in the cloud presents a number of difficulties, not only from the IT perspective, but also in relation to the protection of personal data and privacy as well as traceability. It is in this last provenance aspect that the participation of the University of Vigo focuses, together with the University of the Basque Country. Both Universities are partners of EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Center), the only one of the thirteen research infrastructures of EOSC-Life related to marine sciences. Belén Martín Míguez, responsible for Ecimat’s participation 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. This participation focuses on enabling that biological data can be in the cloud ”while respecting the ABS legal framework as stablished in Nagoya protocol. This framework requires that, along 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.
Spanish institutions participate in two work packages. The first focuses on the development of data policies that take into account the need to ensure the traceability of biological samples throughout their use process, in compliance with the legislation implemented in each country under the Nagoya Protocol. “The fundamental thing about the protocol is that it recognizes the sovereignty of countries over the genetic resources collected in their territory, regardless of where they are utilized. “That is why it is necessary that the institutions that are involved in the collection, collection, transport, use and generation of information from these genetic resources put in place mechanisms to ensure that the country of origin is known throughout the “journey” of the resource. Within work package 4 of the project, a workshop will 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 be incorporated 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 technical solutions to implement these data policies. It is about developing a “source model” for all biological data considered in the project. “We collaborate with other colleagues who have a more bioinformatics profile and we are selecting and proposing mandatory metadata using .eml language (ecological metadata library)”. This metadata – Martín Míguez 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, along the chain of use of a genetic resource, it will be able to trace the last result obtained to the original biological sample of what was inferred.” For this task, explains Martín Míguez, the University of Vigo collaborates with VLIZ (Institute of Marine Sciences of Flanders) and with the BBMRI-ERIC (European Research Infrastructure for Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources, medical sciences).
The CIM-UVigo research and outreach activities are cofunded by the European Union through the ERDF Operational Program Galicia 2014-2020.
Source: DUVI