News 2015

18. December 2015 - New GGBN Data Portal released today!

We are happy to announce that the new GGBN Platform and Data Portal, including new requirements, features, and corporate design, has been launched today at http://www.ggbn.org. The portal allows GGBN member institutions to publish information on their tissue and DNA holdings through a shared data portal. Based on the DNA Bank Network’s data portal, the new GGBN infrastructure has been extended to support DarwinCore-Archive in addition to ABCD. To do so GGBN has created the GGBN Data Standard that can now be used as extensions with DarwinCore-Archive and ABCD). This new infrastructure, and its associated testing over the past year, has resulted in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to increase its GGBN online collections from 8K samples in February 2015 to more than 27K samples. As a result of this and other tests of the DarwinCore-Archive, ABCD and GGBN Data Standard, the DNA Bank Network is now fully merged with GGBN. The virtual platform of GGBN is hosted and maintained by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin. This work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as well as SYNTHESYS. Further information about the GGBN infrastructure can be found here.

New features of the data portal include:

• user settings to subscribe to search results, including download options,
• search and order DNA and tissue samples across all online GGBN partner collections, see http://data.ggbn.org/ggbn_portal/search/index
• find statistics on all 12 of the 40 GGBN member collections currently online, see http://data.ggbn.org/ggbn_portal/stats/index
• see records of certain taxa in other biodiversity portals and loaning details, e.g. http://www.ggbn.org/ggbn_portal/search/record?unitID=AB4OE14&collectioncode=Fishes&institutioncode=USNM
• implementation of the latest GGBN Data Standard for tissues and DNA, see http://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/GGBN_Data_Standard (this standard will be submitted to the Biodiversity Information Standards Working Group in January with the goal of being ratified as an official TDWG standard) and
• integration of the GBIF checklist bank web service as well as the Prokaryotic Nomenclature up-to-date web service (PNU) to feed the GGBN taxonomic backbone.

The updated website also includes information about i) current GGBN members, including contact information for each repository; ii) GGBN membership, including GGBN’s governance model and draft terms of reference, to be reviewed by the GGBN General Assembly in June 2016, during our 2nd GGBN Conference, and iii) a GGBN 2016 Conference information and registration page.

Mailing List

Finally, GGBN will share news and important information via the webpage and via its new mailing list. To post a message to all list members, e-mails can be sent to ggbn-info@lists.fu.berlin.de. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the GGBN mailing list, please go to https://lists.fu-berlin.de/listinfo/ggbn-info.

For updated contact information on GGBN, please visit our contact page.

Guidance on making tissue and DNA collections discoverable through the GGBN data portal, in addition to our online technical requirements, will follow in 2016, in addition to a prototype for the GGBN document library.

15. December 2015 - National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea has joined GGBN as our 40th member. For more information on MABIK, please see http://www.mabik.re.kr/en/main.do

14. December 2015 - GGBN 2016 Conference in Berlin-registration now open!

The Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum and the Museum für Naturkunde are honored to be hosting the 2nd International Conference on Biodiversity Biobanking of the Global Genome Biodiversity Network in Berlin from June, 21 to June, 24, 2016. The conference sessions will be held at the andel’s Hotel Berlin Landsberger Allee. The meeting will take place in parallel with the 31st Annual Meeting for the Society of the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC): http://www.spnhc2016.berlin/

The registration for the GGBN conference is now open. Please check https://meetings.ggbn.org/conference/ggbn/2016/index for information on the conference program, field trips, social events, accommodation, registration and abstract submission.

The conference theme is “Meeting the Challenge: How to Preserve a Cross-Section of the Tree of Life”. We are working on an exciting program and welcome your contribution to this or other topics.

Session topics will include:

• Concerted collecting and sampling strategies to preserve the Tree of Life
• Sampling the lost world in Natural History collections
• Assessing ex situ conservation across time, technology, and the uncertainty of the future

Abstracts can be submitted online at https://meetings.ggbn.org/conference/ggbn/2016/schedConf/registration All abstracts of accepted presentations will be published in the conference book. This conference book will be provided to all participants during check-in and will be published online after the conference.

Working sessions and interest group meetings will be held on

• GGBN Task Force meetings
• Best Practices for data and collections management
• Linking GGBN with other Global Strategic Collecting Efforts
• Knowledge exchange beyond genomic samples: biodiversity biobanks for veterinary, agriculture, culture collections and natural history collection
• Access and Benefit Sharing after Nagoya

Finally, there will be many opportunities to network through our social events and field trips, from the Icebreaker at the Museum für Naturkunde to a Banquet and Dancing at the wonderful Botanic Garden.

Check for more on https://meetings.ggbn.org/conference/ggbn/2016/index and stay tuned!

We are looking forward to seeing you in Berlin for GGBN 2016!

25. November 2015 - Royal Ontario Museum joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Royal Ontario Museum has joined GGBN as our 39th member. For more information on the Royal Ontario Museum, please see http://www.rom.on.ca/en#/gallery/recent

11. November 2015 - Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden has joined GGBN as our 38th member. For more information on the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, please see http://www.jbrj.gov.br/

06. November 2015 - B-HIT paper published on PLOS ONE

Article Source: B-HIT - A Tool for Harvesting and Indexing Biodiversity Data

Kelbert P, Droege G, Barker K, Braak K, Cawsey EM, et al. (2015) B-HIT - A Tool for Harvesting and Indexing Biodiversity Data. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0142240.

The Berlin Harvesting and Indexing Toolkit (B-HIT) is the new harvester for the GGBN Data Portal. More information can be found at our Portal Architecture page and in the B-HIT wiki.

29. September 2015 - Meetings: ESBB 2015

GGBN members will be participating in the ESBB 2015 Conference, September 29 - October 2.

http://www.esbb.org/london/

28. September 2015 - Meetings: TDWG 2015

GGBN members will be participating in the TDWG 2015 Conference, September 28 - October 1.

http://www.tdwg.org/2015-conference/

01. September 2015 - Charles University in Prague makes genomic collections discoverable

We are pleased to announce that the Charles University in Prague has recently made 1,027 tissue samples discoverable for research through the GGBN Data Portal, making it the 12th GGBN member to make its collections information available online. For more information on these collections, please see: http://data.ggbn.org/ggbn_new/stats/details?registry=CUni%2C+Prague. For more information about the Charles University in Prague, please see: http://www.cuni.cz/UKENG-1.html

20. August 2015 - Museum of Southwestern Biology joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Museum of Southwestern Biology has joined GGBN as our 37th member. Collections represent more than 460,000 tissue samples, DNA and RNA extractions, embryos and whole organisms. More than 3,000 species are represented, including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and endo- and ectoparasites. For more information on the Museum of Southwestern Biology, please visit https://msb.unm.edu/less

18. August 2015 - Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has joined GGBN as our 36th member. Collections represent 10,000 tissue (silica gel preserved leaf material) and 5,000 DNA samples representing about 7,000 species. For more information on the RBGE, please visit http://www.rbge.org.uk/less

10. August 2015 - Institute of Vertebrate Biology, The Czech Academy of Sciences joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Institute of Vertebrate Biology, The Czech Academy of Sciences has joined GGBN as our 35th member. Collections represent hundreds of thousands of DNAs and tissues representing about 50 species. For more information see Institute of Vertebrate Biology.

28. July 2015 - Launch beta-version new GGBN Data Portal

We are happy to inform you, that the beta-version of the new GGBN Data Portal has been launched today at http://data.ggbn.org/ggbn_new. The start page will serve as the new entry point for http://www.ggbn.org. http://www.ggbn.org

This work is part of a running DFG project at BGBM on expanding the existing DNA Bank Network infrastructure into GGBN. We have implemented the new GGBN Data Standard within Darwin Core and ABCD and use a new harvester tool. This harvester (HIT) was developed by GBIF and has been extended by several features within another project at BGBM and can now also be used for GGBN purposes. Therefore we now can handle DarwinCore-Archives in addition to ABCD. Smithsonian and BGBM did the test mappings with DwC-A .

The next release information is planned for October 2015.

15. July 2015 - Royal Museum for Central Africa joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) has joined GGBN as our 34th member. Collections include c. 6700 DNA and 56.000 tissue samples representing 3600 species. For more information about Royal Museum for Central Africa, please visit http://www.africamuseum.be/home

16. June 2015 - Meetings: 2016 GGBN Conference

Please join us for the 2016 GGBN International Conference on Biodiversity Biobanking, to be held at the andel’s Hotel from 21-24 June in Berlin, Germany. The theme for this program will be Meeting the Challenge: How to Preserve a Cross-Section of the Tree of Life. Please see our Conference Flyer attached for your reference.

For more information, please visit our new meeting webpage at: http://meetings.ggbn.org/site/ggbn2016

The Conference Committee welcomes your ideas for sessions and speakers. Suggestions for sessions and speakers can be submitted to ggbn@si.edu through July 14th 2015.

We look forward to seeing you next year in Berlin!

06. June 2015 - GGBN Access and Benefit Sharing Guidance

GGBN creates a practical guide for Access and Benefit-Sharing, the GGBN Code of Conduct, along with additional guidance on Best Practice and Material Transfer Agreement templates for GGBN member use.

Download the GGBN Code of Conduct, Best Practice and Material Transfer Agreement templates from our document library.

03. June 2015 - Belgian Coordinated Collections of Micro-organisms joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Belgian Coordinated Collections of Micro-organisms (BCCM) has joined GGBN as an observer member. The BCCM collections hold together about 9.900 species (64.000 strains). DNA of these strains can be prepared on request. In addition 3.400 DNA samples representing about 760 microbial species are readily available. For more information about the Belgian Coordinated Collections of Micro-organisms (BCCM), please visit: http://bccm.belspo.be/

15. May 2015 - Meetings: SPNHC 2015

GGBN members will be participating in the SPNHC 2015 Conference, May 19-23.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/spnhc2015/home/

05. May 2015 - Swedish Museum of Natural History joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM) has joined GGBN as an observer member. Collections represent several thousand species with approximately 10,000 DNA and 300,000 tissue samples. For more information about the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM), please visit: http://www.nrm.se/english.16_en.html

31. April 2015 - Meetings: ISBER 2015

GGBN members will be participating in the ISBER 2015 Conference, May 5-9 2015.

http://www.isber.org/event/id/464123/ISBER-2015-Annual-Meeting--Exhibits---Phoenix.htm

18. April 2015 - Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz (SMNG) has joined GGBN as our 30th member. Collections include 1860 DNA and 2200 tissue samples representing 249 species. For more information about Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz, please visit http://www.senckenberg.de/root/index.php?page_id=5257

01. April 2015 - GGBN March 2015 Newsletter

The GGBN March 2015 newsletter has been released today by the GGBN Communications & Outreach Task Force.

Task Force members and contributors to this newsletter include:

• Enrique Arbeláez Cortes, Alexander von Humboldt Institute/Colombia
• Katie Barker, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/United States
• Carol Butler, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/United States
• Dan Distel, Ocean Genome Legacy/United States
• Gabi Droege, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem/Germany
• Chris Lyal, Natural History Museum London/United Kingdom
• Kakha Nadiradze, Association for Farmers Rights Defense/Georgia
• Ole Seber, Natural History Museum Copenhagen/Denmark
• Eva-Maria Sehr, Austrian Institute of Technology/Austria
• Charlotte Seid, Ocean Genome Legacy/United States
• Dustin Stonecipher, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/United States
• Tina Tennessen, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/United States

The newsletter is available at: http://ggbn.org/docs/GGBN_March2015_Newsletter_FINAL.pdf

15. March 2015 - Denver Museum of Nature & Science joins GGBN

We are pleased to announce that The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has joined GGBN as an associate member. Collections represent 326 bird and mammal species with approximately 1,000 DNA and 15,000 tissue samples. For more information about The Denver Museum of Nature & Science, please visit: http://www.dmns.org/