The objective of the work is to specify and develop formats and methods to represent genomic information in such a way that it is easier to access, needs less storage space (i.e., it has better encoding and compression), and its security and privacy are improved. Software tools are also developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the approaches.
The results are being contributed to the international standardization in ISO, where researchers of the group are having a key role (even co-chairing the ISO Working Group activity) in the development of the standard (ISO/IEC 23092). The standard, known as MPEG-G, will specify interoperable formats, encoding and compression algorithms, and metadata, security and APIs.
Daniel Naro (BSC)