Standards in Human ancient DNA metadata reporting workshop and round table

Important Information

• When: 📅 19th of June 2025 from 13.00 to 16.00 CET
• Where: 🌐 Online (via Zoom) 🧑‍💻
• Price: 💰 Free
• Target audience: 🧑‍🔬🧑‍💻 anyone (students to professors! All perspectives are welcome)

Have your say on the standards for ancient DNA data!

Gathering metadata or finding samples and data for a project can be a real challenge. But so can uploading the metadata in the first place!

Anyone who has ever uploaded sequencing data to public repositories or aggregated data for a project knows what a nightmare it can be! In collaboration with the Genomics Standard Consortium and the EBI-ENA database, the Minimum Information about any Ancient Sequence (MInAS) project aims to develop a standardised and dedicated metadata reporting schemes for ancient DNA samples and sequencing data via community-based consensus and training.

But in order to develop these schemes we need as much community input as possible! We are a diverse research community and YOU will be the end-user.

In this extraordinary interactive HAAM-Radio, you will actively participate in the testing of, and providing feedback on, a draft proposal for the standard for reporting of ancient DNA metadata!

Thiseas C. Lamnidis and James Fellows Yates will introduce the project, and explain how to try out the draft MInAS metadata checklist. In groups, participants then will try filling out a table for data they bring with them, based on the specifications in the standard. Finally, we will have a round-table discussion feedback on your experiences to build consensus and agreement on the proposed standard.

This is your chance to provide input, to get YOUR perspectives and contributions to making a field-wide reporting standard, and to make sure the standards also fit YOUR research! The schema will be adopted by the ENA, SRA, and other INSDC database members! And for a final motivator to join: any participant who provides feedback will be given the option to be included as a co-author on the academic publications arising from the project.

Coordinators

What we need from you: Join us on zoom and please have prepared information about two of your samples (published or unpublished), which should include all the information YOU would want to see other researchers uploading with their data.

What you can get: Everyone who contributes feedback during the workshop will be eligible for coauthorship on future publications.

Please register here.

⚠️ For security reasons, registration is required to receive the zoom link.

The Zoom link will be sent out to participants who have registered their attendance, and presenters via email on the 18th of June 2025.