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This special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics contains updated specifications of COMBINE standards in systems and synthetic biology. The 2022 special issue presents three updates to the standards: CellML 2.0.1, SBML Level 3 Package: Spatial Processes, Version 1, Release 1, and Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) Version 3.1.0. This document can also be used to identify the latest specifications for all COMBINE standards. In addition, this editorial provides a brief overview of the COMBINE 2022 meeting in Berlin.

This special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics contains updated specifications of COMBINE standards in systems and synthetic biology. The 2021 special issue presents four updates of standards: Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual Version 2.3, Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual Version 3.0, Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language Level 1 Version 4, and OMEX Metadata specification Version 1.2. This document can also be consulted to identify the latest specifications of all COMBINE standards.

This paper presents a report on outcomes of the 10th Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE) meeting that was held in Heidelberg, Germany, in July of 2019. The annual event brings together researchers, biocurators and software engineers to present recent results and discuss future work in the area of standards for systems and synthetic biology. The COMBINE initiative coordinates the development of various community standards and formats for computational models in the life sciences. Over the past 10 years, COMBINE has brought together standard communities that have further developed and harmonized their standards for better interoperability of models and data. COMBINE 2019 was co-located with a stakeholder workshop of the European EU-STANDS4PM initiative that aims at harmonized data and model standardization for in silico models in the field of personalized medicine, as well as with the FAIRDOM PALs meeting to discuss findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data sharing. This report briefly describes the work discussed in invited and contributed talks as well as during breakout sessions. It also highlights recent advancements in data, model, and annotation standardization efforts. Finally, this report concludes with some challenges and opportunities that this community will face during the next 10 years.

This special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics presents papers related to the 10th COMBINE meeting together with the annual update of COMBINE standards in systems and synthetic biology.

This special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics presents an overview of COMBINE standards and their latest specifications. The standards cover representation formats for computational modeling in synthetic and systems biology and include BioPAX, CellML, NeuroML, SBML, SBGN, SBOL and SED-ML. The articles in this issue contain updated specifications of SBGN Process Description Level 1 Version 2, SBML Level 3 Core Version 2 Release 2, SBOL Version 2.3.0, and SBOL Visual Version 2.1.

Rule-based modeling is an approach that permits constructing reaction networks based on the specification of rules for molecular interactions and transformations. These rules can encompass details such as the interacting sub-molecular domains and the states and binding status of the involved components. Conceptually, fine-grained spatial information such as locations can also be provided. Through “wildcards” representing component states, entire families of molecule complexes sharing certain properties can be specified as patterns. This can significantly simplify the definition of models involving species with multiple components, multiple states, and multiple compartments. The systems biology markup language (SBML) Level 3 Multi Package Version 1 extends the SBML Level 3 Version 1 core with the “type” concept in the Species and Compartment classes. Therefore, reaction rules may contain species that can be patterns and exist in multiple locations. Multiple software tools such as Simmune and BioNetGen support this standard that thus also becomes a medium for exchanging rule-based models. This document provides the specification for Release 2 of Version 1 of the SBML Level 3 Multi package. No design changes have been made to the description of models between Release 1 and Release 2; changes are restricted to the correction of errata and the addition of clarifications.

Biological models often contain elements that have inexact numerical values, since they are based on values that are stochastic in nature or data that contains uncertainty. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) Level 3 Core specification does not include an explicit mechanism to include inexact or stochastic values in a model, but it does provide a mechanism for SBML packages to extend the Core specification and add additional syntactic constructs. The SBML Distributions package for SBML Level 3 adds the necessary features to allow models to encode information about the distribution and uncertainty of values underlying a quantity.

Standards are essential to the advancement of Systems and Synthetic Biology. COMBINE provides a formal body and a centralised platform to help develop and disseminate relevant standards and related resources. The regular special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics aims to support the exchange, distribution and archiving of these standards by providing unified, easily citable access. This paper provides an overview of existing COMBINE standards and presents developments of the last year.

Computational models can help researchers to interpret data, understand biological functions, and make quantitative predictions. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a file format for representing computational models in a declarative form that different software systems can exchange. SBML is oriented towards describing biological processes of the sort common in research on a number of topics, including metabolic pathways, cell signaling pathways, and many others. By supporting SBML as an input/output format, different tools can all operate on an identical representation of a model, removing opportunities for translation errors and assuring a common starting point for analyses and simulations. This document provides the specification for Release 2 of Version 2 of SBML Level 3 Core. The specification defines the data structures prescribed by SBML as well as their encoding in XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. Release 2 corrects some errors and clarifies some ambiguities discovered in Release 1. This specification also defines validation rules that determine the validity of an SBML document, and provides many examples of models in SBML form. Other materials and software are available from the SBML project website at http://sbml.org/.

Computational models can help researchers to interpret data, understand biological functions, and make quantitative predictions. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a file format for representing computational models in a declarative form that different software systems can exchange. SBML is oriented towards describing biological processes of the sort common in research on a number of topics, including metabolic pathways, cell signaling pathways, and many others. By supporting SBML as an input/output format, different tools can all operate on an identical representation of a model, removing opportunities for translation errors and assuring a common starting point for analyses and simulations. This document provides the specification for Release 2 of Version 1 of SBML Level 3 Core. The specification defines the data structures prescribed by SBML, their encoding in XML (the eXtensible Markup Language), validation rules that determine the validity of an SBML document, and examples of models in SBML form. No design changes have been made to the description of models between Release 1 and Release 2; changes are restricted to the format of annotations, the correction of errata and the addition of clarifications. Other materials and software are available from the SBML project website at http://sbml.org/.

Many software tools provide facilities for depicting reaction network diagrams in a visual form. Two aspects of such a visual diagram can be distinguished: the layout (i.e.: the positioning and connections) of the elements in the diagram, and the graphical form of the elements (for example, the glyphs used for symbols, the properties of the lines connecting them, and so on). This document describes the SBML Level 3 Render package that complements the SBML Level 3 Layout package and provides a means of capturing the precise rendering of the elements in a diagram. The SBML Level 3 Render package provides a flexible approach to rendering that is independent of both the underlying SBML model and the Layout information. There can be one block of render information that applies to all layouts or an additional block for each layout. Many of the elements used in the current render specification are based on corresponding elements from the SVG specification. This allows us to easily convert a combination of layout information and render information into a SVG drawing.

Computational models can help researchers to interpret data, understand biological functions, and make quantitative predictions. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a file format for representing computational models in a declarative form that different software systems can exchange. SBML is oriented towards describing biological processes of the sort common in research on a number of topics, including metabolic pathways, cell signaling pathways, and many others. By supporting SBML as an input/output format, different tools can all operate on an identical representation of a model, removing opportunities for translation errors and assuring a common starting point for analyses and simulations. This document provides the specification for Version 2 of SBML Level 3 Core. The specification defines the data structures prescribed by SBML, their encoding in XML (the eXtensible Markup Language), validation rules that determine the validity of an SBML document, and examples of models in SBML form. The design of Version 2 differs from Version 1 principally in allowing new MathML constructs, making more child elements optional, and adding identifiers to all SBML elements instead of only selected elements. Other materials and software are available from the SBML project website at http://sbml.org/.

Computational models can help researchers to interpret data, understand biological function, and make quantitative predictions. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a file format for representing computational models in a declarative form that can be exchanged between different software systems. SBML is oriented towards describing biological processes of the sort common in research on a number of topics, including metabolic pathways, cell signaling pathways, and many others. By supporting SBML as an input/output format, different tools can all operate on an identical representation of a model, removing opportunities for translation errors and assuring a common starting point for analyses and simulations. This document provides the specification for Version 5 of SBML Level 2. The specification defines the data structures prescribed by SBML as well as their encoding in XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. This specification also defines validation rules that determine the validity of an SBML document, and provides many examples of models in SBML form. Other materials and software are available from the SBML project web site, http://sbml.org/.

Quantitative methods for modelling biological networks require an in-depth knowledge of the biochemical reactions and their stoichiometric and kinetic parameters. In many practical cases, this knowledge is missing. This has led to the development of several qualitative modelling methods using information such as, for example, gene expression data coming from functional genomic experiments. The SBML Level 3 Version 1 Core specification does not provide a mechanism for explicitly encoding qualitative models, but it does provide a mechanism for SBML packages to extend the Core specification and add additional syntactical constructs.

Computational models can help researchers to interpret data, understand biological function, and make quantitative predictions. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a file format for representing computational models in a declarative form that can be exchanged between different software systems. SBML is oriented towards describing biological processes of the sort common in research on a number of topics, including metabolic pathways, cell signaling pathways, and many others. By supporting SBML as an input/output format, different tools can all operate on an identical representation of a model, removing opportunities for translation errors and assuring a common starting point for analyses and simulations. This document provides the specification for Version 1 of SBML Level 3 Core. The specification defines the data structures prescribed by SBML as well as their encoding in XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. This specification also defines validation rules that determine the validity of an SBML document, and provides many examples of models in SBML form. Other materials and software are available from the SBML project web site, http://sbml.org/.

Quantitative methods for modelling biological networks require an in-depth knowledge of the biochemical reactions and their stoichiometric and kinetic parameters. In many practical cases, this knowledge is missing. This has led to the development of several qualitative modelling methods using information such as, for example, gene expression data coming from functional genomic experiments. The SBML Level 3 Version 1 Core specification does not provide a mechanism for explicitly encoding qualitative models, but it does provide a mechanism for SBML packages to extend the Core specification and add additional syntactical constructs. The SBML Qualitative Models package for SBML Level 3 adds features so that qualitative models can be directly and explicitly encoded. The approach taken in this package is essentially based on the definition of regulatory or influence graphs. The SBML Qualitative Models package defines the structure and syntax necessary to describe qualitative models that associate discrete levels of activities with entity pools and the transitions between states that describe the processes involved. This is particularly suited to logical models (Boolean or multi-valued) and some classes of Petri net models can be encoded with the approach.