The Policies and Guidelines of the BCBC are available (last updated on April 27, 2011 - version 4). There are two versions available:

• For U01 Principal Investigators (Institutional signature required)
• For U01 co-investigators, and all BCBC Co-Investigators, including CBP and TCPA awardees (No institutional signature required)

The BCBC Core Facility Guidelines document provides a set of guidelines describing the expected features of BCBC Cores, general operational expectations, oversight mechanisms, and reporting requirements.

View the BCBC Core Facility Guidelines

The goal of this document is to describe the minimal required information that BCBC Investigators, Co-Investigators and Affiliates need to maintain via their betacell.org account profile.

Download the MIBIA standards (Revision 1)

• 2011 Collaborative Bridging Project (CBP) Program
• Resource Generation Project (RGP)
• 2011 Pilot & Feasibility Program (P&F)
• 2011 Transformative Collaborative Project Award (TCPA)

The BCBC Coordinating Center maintains recommendations on mouse strain annotations, which are in line with Jackson Laboratories/MGI "standards".

Download the Guidelines on Mouse Strain Submissions (Revision 2)

The Bioinformatics and Epigenomics Workgroup (WG2) maintains the following standards documents. Please contact the workgroup with any questions.

ChIP-Seq Minimal Standards and Guidelines

Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) followed by high-throughput DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq) have become valuable approaches for the global mapping of transcription factor binding sites and histone modifications (Figure 1). Despite their widespread use, considerable differences exist in how the experiments are conducted, how the results are scored, and how the data are archived for public dissemination. The ENCODE and modENCODE Consortia have developed working standards for the performance and distribution of results of ChIP-seq experiments. Summarized below are relevant standards that have been adapted for use by the beta cell consortium, including guidelines for antibody validation, numbers of experimental replicates, and sequencing depth as well as parameters that should be reported with each experiment. It is recognized that these parameters may change over time both as technology and our understanding improves.

Download version 1.0 of the document (May 3, 2011)

RNA-Seq Minimal Standards and Guidelines

The utilization of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) experiments to characterize transcribed elements and quantify RNA expression using RNA has increased in response to improvements in sequencing technologies, to reduction in costs and to improvements in the computational tools that assist in interpreting the results. To guide the generation of high quality data this document aims to provide uniform standards and guidelines for RNA-seq experiments. Due to rapidly changing and emerging sequencing technologies and data types, this standards document should be revised annually. RNA-seq experiments are already used to characterize several types of RNA isolated from either whole cells or sub-cellular compartments. These include long RNAs (i.e. >200nts), short RNAs (i.e. <200nts), polyA+, polyA-, 5’ end CAGE tags and 5’ and 3’ end PET tags. They can also be used to multiplex targeted regions such as those amplified by RT-PCR, RACE, etc. A variety of different sequencing technologies are used as are a number of different analysis methods. Standards are likely to need some modification depending on the sample, the RNA-seq methodology and the analysis methods. The following attempts to capture the types of information that should be reported on each, and provides guidelines for experimental design.

Download version 1.0 of the document (May 3, 2011)

To cite the BCBC website (www.betacell.org and genomics.betacell.org), please use the following as a template:

We acknowledge the use of resources from the Beta Cell Biology Consortium (www.betacell.org), funded by NIDDK U01-DK-072473.

1. The anti-Mouse Neurog3 antibody (AB2013) was provided by the Beta Cell Biology Consortium, funded by NIDDK U01DK072473.
2. Our gene list was compiled by using the Beta Cell Genomics resource (http://genomics.betacell.org) from the Beta Cell Biology Consortium (www.betacell.org), funded by NIDDK U01DK072473.

If you have any questions, please contact us.