The re-use of previously validated designs is critical to the evolution of synthetic biology from a research discipline to an engineering practice. Here we describe the Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), a proposed data standard for exchanging designs within the synthetic biology community. SBOL represents synthetic biology designs in a community-driven, formalized format for exchange between software tools, research groups and commercial service providers. The SBOL Developers Group has implemented SBOL as an XML/RDF serialization and provides software libraries and specification documentation to help developers implement SBOL in their own software. We describe early successes, including a demonstration of the utility of SBOL for information exchange between several different software tools and repositories from both academic and industrial partners. As a community-driven standard, SBOL will be updated as synthetic biology evolves to provide specific capabilities for different aspects of the synthetic biology workflow.*

*(Michal Galdzicki et al. Nature Biotechnology 32, 545-550 (2014))

The Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual (SBOL Visual) project is an effort to create an open-source graphical notation to support the description and specification of genetic designs. SBOL Visual is intended for use by biological engineers in forward engineering projects. It aims to encourage and support model-driven engineering by establishing a common set of symbols.*

*(Specification (SBOL Visual) - Jacqueline Quinn,  et al.:  http://sbolstandard.org/downloads/specification-sbol-visual/ (date: 01.10.2015))