ABSTRACT

Stable isotopes encode and integrate the origin of matter; their analysis offers tremendous potential to address questions across diverse scientific disciplines. The broad applicability of stable isotopes, coupled with advancements in high-throughput analysis, have created a scientific field that is growing exponentially, and generating data at a rate paralleling the explosive rise of DNA sequencing and genomics. Centralized data repositories, such as GenBank, have become central in archiving information, and the analytics offered by these resources are revolutionizing science and everyday life. But to date, a centralized database for the management of isotopic data does not exist. The absence of such a resource has impeded research progress through the unnecessary duplication of effort, restricted the near-boundless application of stable isotopes, and curtailed the exchange of information among scientists within and among disciplines. The creation of a centralized database for stable isotopes would be more than a silo for data; it would be a dynamic resource to unite disciplinary fields and answer pressing questions in agriculture, animal sciences, archaeology, anthropology, ecology, medicine, nutrition, physiology, paleontology, forensics, earth and planetary sciences. We believe that such a centralized database would accelerate and enhance such global and multi-disciplinary endeavors, thus broaden the reach of isotope science.

This project brings together a multidisciplinary team of analytical experts and scientists who produce and interpret isotope data with database architects and website developers in a series of workshops that will culminate in the creation of an IsoBank, a web-accessible centralized database of stable isotope data that serves an interdisciplinary research and education community. IsoBank will enable a diverse and rapidly growing scientific community to harness the advantages of big data analytics. At the same time, it will increase the efficiency of a wide range of existing isotope-based applications, which require reference data to support interpretation. IsoBank is envisioned to foster interactions across disciplines that speak a common chemical language that will result in the fusion of diverse perspectives, a process that has resulted in some of the biggest and most creative advances in science. IsoBank will enhance the standards for data quality assurance and control by creating a network among core isotope laboratories in the U.S. that are currently producing nearly a million new datapoints per year. Lastly, IsoBank (isobank.org) is poised to address growing initiatives of publication and funding agencies for data accessibility and transparency.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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