Sequence Mapping and Assembly Assessment Project (SMAAP)

Sequencing the human genome, completed in 2001, took ten years and cost approximately $3,000 millions. The project was the result of international collaboration among various large-scale sequencing centers, with thousands of professionals and hundreds of sequencing teams. Since then, technology for sequencing DNA has evolved drastically. Since 2005, the scientific community has been able to use second-generation sequencing methods that allow for successful sequencing of large genomes in a much shorter time and at a much lower cost than the traditional (or “de Sanger”) sequencing systems.

More than fifty research teams from Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, France, Germany, Canada and China will meet on 5, 6 and 7 April in Barcelona at the “Sequence Mapping and Assembly Assessment Project dnGASP/RGASP3 Workshop” (SMAAP), a bioinformatics evaluation contest to compare and select the best tools for genome sequencing, mapping and assembly, and for reading alignment data using second-generation sequencing tools. Contestants were chosen from the proposals submitted with a genome analysis solution to a challenge posed by the scientific committee.

This is the first scientific competition of its kind to be held in Spain and will open doors for a new way of doing science. SMAAP is a contest of ideas among researchers that submitted the best informatics evaluation solutions. The research groups participating in this competition have had to solve a specific genome analysis problem. The projects submitted contribute solutions under the framework of the RGASP3 (RNASeq Genome Annotation Assessment Project 3) and the dnGASP (de novo Genome Assembly Assessment Project).

SMAAP is organized by the International Center for Scientific Debate (ICSD), an initiative of Biocat driven by “la Caixa” Welfare Projects, the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the National Genome Analysis Center (CNAG). It has also received support from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI); the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI); the Revolutionary Approaches and Devices for Nucleic Acid analysis (RADNA) and the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE).