science

Minimum information standard

Minimum information standard is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Minimum information standard rather than just read about it. In short: Minimum information standards are sets of guidelines and formats for reporting data derived by specific high-throughput methods. Their purpose is to ensure the data generated by these methods can be easily verified, analysed and interpreted by the wider scientific community.

Key takeaways

Minimum information standard belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Minimum information standard to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Minimum information standard from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Minimum information standards are sets of guidelines and formats for reporting data derived by specific high-throughput methods. Their purpose is to ensure the data generated by these methods can be easily verified, analysed and interpreted by the wider scientific community. Ultimately, they facilitate the transfer of data from journal articles (unstructured data) into databases (structured data) in a form that enables data to be mined across multiple data sets. Minimal information standards are available for a vast variety of experiment types including microarray (MIAME), RNAseq (MINSEQE), metabolomics (MSI) and proteomics (MIAPE). Minimum information standards typically have two parts. Firstly, there is a set of reporting requirements – typically presented as a table or a checklist. Secondly, there is a data format. Information about an experiment needs to be converted into the appropriate data format for it to be submitted to the relevant database. In the case of MIAME, the data format is provided in spreadsheet format (MAGE-TAB). Some of the communities that maintain minimum information standards also provide tools to help experimental researchers to annotate their data.

MI Standards The individual minimum information standards are brought by the communities of cross-disciplinary specialists focused on the problematic of the specific method used in experimental biology. The standards then provide specifications what information about the experiments (metadata) is crucial and important to be reported together with the resultant data to make it comprehensive. The need for this standardization is largely driven by the development of high-throughput experimental methods that provide tremendous amounts of data. The development of minimum information standards of different methods is since 2008 being harmonized by "Minimum Information about a Biomedical or Biological Investigation" (MIBBI) project.

MIAPPE, Minimum Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment MIAPPE is an open, community driven project to harmonize data from plant phenotyping experiments. MIAPPE comprises both a conceptual checklist of metadata required to adequately describe a plant phenotyping experiment.

MIQE, Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments

Published in 2009 these guidelines for the basis of requirements by many journals when submitting QPCR data, sadly they are not adhered to enough.

MIAME, gene expression microarray

Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) describes the Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment that is needed to enable the interpretation of the results of the experiment unambiguously and potentially to reproduce the experiment and is aimed at facilitating the dissemination of data from microarray experiments. It was published by the FGED Society in 2001 and was the first published minimum information standard for high-throughput experiments in the life sciences. MIAME contains a number of extensions to cover specific biological domains, including MIAME-env, MIAME-nut and MIAME-tox, covering environmental genomics, nutritional genomics and toxogenomics, respectively.

MINI: Minimum Information about a Neuroscience Investigation

MINI: Electrophysiology Electrophysiology is a technology used to study the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. Electrophysiology typically involves the measurements of voltage change or electric current flow on a wide variety of scales from single ion channel proteins to whole tissues. This document is a single module, as part of the Minimum Information about a Neuroscience investigation (MINI) family of reporting guideline documents, produced by community consultation and continually available for public comment. A MINI module represents the minimum information that should be reported about a dataset to facilitate computational access and analysis to allow a reader to interpret and critically evaluate the processes performed and the conclusions reached, and to support their experimental corroboration. In practice a MINI module comprises a checklist of information that should be provided (for example about the protocols employed) when a data set is described for publication. The full specification of the MINI module can be found here.

MIARE, RNAi experiment Minimum Information About an RNAi Experiment (MIARE) is a data reporting guideline which describes the minimum information that should be reported about an RNAi experiment to enable the unambiguous interpretation and reproduction of the results.

MIACA, cell based assay Advances in genomics and functional genomics have enabled large-scale analyses of gene and protein function by means of high-throughput cell biological analyses. Thereby, cells in culture can be perturbed in vitro and the induced effects recorded and analyzed. Perturbations can be triggered in several ways, for instance with molecules (siRNAs, expression constructs, small chemical compounds, ligands for receptors, etc.), through environmental stresses (such as temperature shift, serum starvation, oxygen deprivation, etc.), or combinations thereof. The cellular responses to such perturbations are analyzed in order to identify molecular events in the biological processes addressed and understand biological principles. We propose the Minimum Information About a Cellular Assay (MIACA) for reporting a cellular assay, and CA-OM, the modular cellular assay object model, to facilitate exchange of data and accompanying information, and to compare and integrate data that originate from different, albeit complementary approaches, and to elucidate higher order principles. Documents describing MIACA are available and provide further information as well as the checklist of terms that should be reported.

MIAPE, proteomic experiments

The Minimum Information About a Proteomic Experiment documents describe information which should be given along with a proteomic experiment. The parent document describes the processes and principles underpinning the development of a series of domain specific documents which now cover all aspects of a MS-based proteomics workflow.

MIMIx, molecular interactions This document has been developed and maintained by the Molecular Interaction worktrack of the HUPO-PSI (www.psidev.info) and describes the Minimum Information about a Molecular Interaction experiment.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Minimum information standard

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Minimum information standard claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Minimum information standard before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Minimum information standard ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Minimum information standard

In research: Minimum information standard appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Minimum information standard in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Minimum information standard is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Bioinformatics, Knowledge representation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Minimum information standard outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Minimum information standard in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Minimum information standard means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Minimum information standard out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Minimum information standard in simple terms?

Why does Minimum information standard matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Minimum information standard?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Minimum information standard.