The from the iGEM DNA distribution kit and registry, to the eagerness of faculty and universities across the globe, the iGEM competition empowers students to make a raw idea into a tangible, presentable project. This fact is made clear depth by the number and depth of projects in past years.[1]

In addition to empowering iGEM-ers, a uploading data to a standardized characterization database promotes openness. In other biological applications, such as genomic sequencing⁴, open data is the norm for strong reasons; open data allows communities to validate successes and understand failures, while supporting future researchers downstream. For these reasons, iGEM is founded upon an open community. Open data through the BBCDD is another way for iGEM-ers to contribute to an open community.

Past approaches to designing a BioBrick characterization database dealt with difficult questions⁶ of data standardization; for the other part types, we created a flexible data format to accommodate different methods of characterization and data types that teams could possibly use.

totally unpolished: For our new part part RiboTal, we wanted to see how it functions before making data standards for it. Go see how we went about answering some data standards issues here: link.

[1] M Galdzicki, D Chandran, JH Gennari, HM Sauro, "Design and Analysis of Bio-molecular Circuits", pp. 281, 2011

¹ https://2011.igem.org/Jamborees
² https://2012.igem.org/Jamborees
³ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank
⁴ http://www.pdb.org/pdb/home/home.do
⁵ http://openwetware.org/wiki/Parts_characterization#Discussion_Topics
⁶ http://www.jbioleng.org/content/3/1/4