i5K Coordinating Group

September 28, 2022

11:00-12:00 (EDT

The focus of this meeting will be on re-visioning i5K.

Attending: Monica Poelchau, Chris Childers, Kevin Hackett, Jay Evans, Glenn Hanes, Sarthok Rahman, Mike Pfrender, Marc Halfon, Duane McKenna, Meg Allen, Brad Cotes, Anna Childers, Sue Brown, Marian Goldsmith, Surya Saha, Robert Miller, Kristen Panfilio

  • Upcoming Meetings [brief updates, if any]

  • Biodiversity Genomics-Hinxton, 3-7 October 2022 (Mark, Rob, Anna)

    • EBP Session for i5K (Rob)
    • EBP Video (Rob, Jay)
      • Video will likely not be used due to lack of submissions in general
  • ESA-Vancouver, 13-16 November 2022 (Brad, Catherine)
    • Going full steam ahead
  • Publications - no updates
  • EBP Update (Anna, Kevin)
  • Last meeting - Sept 1
  • 2 new affiliated projects, Beenome and EBP Norway
  • Report from the GoaT database –at 1059 species’ with genomes under EBP umbrella which represents 513 families
  • Of all assemblies that meeting contiguity metrics (1 Mb contig N50, 10 Mb scaffold N50), 41% are EBP – demonstrating the impact of EBP
  • Still missing JGI and BGI in these numbers
  • Majority of assemblies are chordates, then arthropods (most of which are lepidoptera)
  • EBP committees are working on reports on JEDI issues and on interactions with indigenous communities
  • Working with the Convention on Biological Diversity to keep Digital Sequence Information (DSI) open access
  • Next international meeting is a Conference of the Parties in Montreal in December
  • One of the propositions on the table for benefits sharing assuming open access passes is to create a global biodiversity fund so profits from commercial use of a genome will have a tax (1%) that goes back to indigenous communities
  • Working on EBP governance structure documentation
  • Frontiers in Science Workshop in May 2023 in Switzerland
  • Will be by invitation
  • Workshop to:
  • Convene leaders to review bottlenecks/major blockers to scale up EBP
  • Propose solutions to deploy Phase II of EBP
  • Act as the springboard for the production of a Frontiers in Science article as a key outcome of the workshop
  • CHIPS And Science Act Of 2022 passed and signed into law in the US and New National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative Executive Order (EO)
  • Bill includes language for the first time to instruct OSTP to create a policy for coordinated national sequencing policy across federal partners in 12 months
  • EO does not include specific language on genome sequencing

  • Is there a need for an OSTP interagency working group to address a national sequencing strategy?

  • Visioning 2022 (Monica, Brad) - Discussion.
  • History note: i5k pilot was extraordinary impactful, coordinated by Baylor and funded by a NHGRI grant
  • We had a long discussion on implementation of the vision, once we have updated it:
  • Problem - meetings, but also getting new participants, volunteer work. A lot of the comments are exactly the same as we had before. How many of these people who commented were young, enthusiastic, and willing to commit their time? A lot of time in the past was spent organizing, and then hard to follow through since no funding was present. Are we willing to open up these meetings? Changing how we organize ourselves may help with volunteer hours. Communication barriers.
  • Kristen agrees with Sue - same problems as the past 10 years. Participation took up much time. Hemipteroid meetings were a success. Had go-to, active contacts for certain aspects that were happening - e.g. manual annotation work. Now, we can try to cultivate a wider steering committee. There is a new insect genome evolution consortium, funded in Germany. It will run for the next 6 years. We could interface with them, to promote outreach, more funded help. Could share our youtube videos, which are a unique resource. Kristen can be the liaison for this group. There are many other groups that we could liaise with, though.
  • One hard problem - how do you identify the leaders? Could recruit at biodiversity genomics meeting. Advertise on Slack. (Could also consistently remind about Slack during our meetings with other communities; in presentations; etc.)
  • AGS = i5k. At some point, we need to figure what the core group of coordinators is. What would be different between a ‘core’ group and the larger i5k? General membership meeting = AGS meeting. Coordination should happen within the core group?
  • Gap analysis/needs approach - we need to restructure, specifically we need a visioning committee, and subcommittees for other tasks.
  • It sounds like the committee is having trouble committing to a vision without knowing whether we can implement it. We should be careful to not conflate implementation of the vision, vs. the vision itself.
  • What seems to distinguish us from other more successful communities is $$$. This is causing some tension. We tried previously to get an STC proposal - this did not work. Until we figure out a funding strategy, we will always have an implementation problem.
  • Another option - get an RCN in order to have an organized community (we’d need a vision for this, though). The vision and the implementation thereof go hand in hand - but we need to be cognizant of people’s time, and need to build in time protections in the future.
  • We need the community to see that their input is appreciated. We need to improve our communication on this.
  • New vision - the new needs articulated aren’t wholly different from the original vision. We could tweak the original vision, and build from it. Make sure that it’s widely adopted by the group, and work on an implementation strategy.
  • To play devil’s advocate - do we even need i5k anymore? Is our vision already covered by other groups? We should really articulate what we bring to the insect genomics community in light of other activities.
    • We need i5k to remove silos in sequencing coordination. This is still a gap. Can we still increase the push to increase the quality of what is being generated. This was also a key need articulated by the community.
    • signposting and switchboard roles seem key.
  • Next action items:
    • We need to continue to think about vision and implementation.
    • Vision:
      • Create a shared google doc to work on vision together
      • Identify whether we need a new vision, or whether the current community needs are similar enough to the old vision to only need to tweak it. (Compare slides 3 and 7 of the presentation to illustrate this)
    • Implementation:
      • No action items for now, but consider and develop implementation as we decide on the vision
      • improvements - Should we reach out to other successful, vibrant communities, to ask how they operate? What are they doing differently? (Or is the difference really just money - people funded to work on the project full or part time?)

NEXT MEETING: October 19, 2022