Here we present the Minimum Information about a Genotyping Experiment (MIGen) standard. MIGen recommends the standard information required to report a genotyping experiment, covering: study and experiment design, subject information, sample collection and processing, genotyping procedure, and data analysis methods, if applicable.

Genotyping experiments are widely used in clinical and basic research laboratories to identify associations between genes and normal/abnormal phenotypes. Genotyping assay techniques vary from PCR reactions in a test tube with gel electrophoresis detection to high throughput chip or bead array assay employing various technologies for automatic genotype calls. Depending on the study purpose and design, the resulting genotype data could involve millions of markers for thousands of individuals, requiring substantial data analysis using various statistical, modeling or other methodologies. To date, there is no standard for reporting genotyping experiments. The goal of MIGen is to set a reporting standard for adoption by the research community to facilitate consistent data interpretation and independent validation/reproduction, and to serve as guidance for database design for storing genotyping experiment data. MIGen is being developed as a collaborative project involving international domain experts and is a registered project under MIBBI: Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations.

Based on MIGen standard we aim to develop and implement data model for genotyping experimental data archiving, data management, data sharing and data transfer.