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))

The Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language (SED-ML). SED-ML encodes in a computer-readable exchange format the information required by MIASE to enable reproduction of simulation experiments. It has been developed as a community project and it is defined in a detailed technical specification and additionally provides an XML schema. [ ... ] It covers the description of the most frequent type of simulation experiments in the area, namely time course simulations. SED-ML documents specify which models to use in an experiment, modifications to apply on the models before using them, which simulation procedures to run on each model, what analysis results to output, and how the results should be presented. These descriptions are independent of the underlying model implementation. SED-ML is a software-independent format for encoding the description of simulation experiments; it is not specific to particular simulation tools. Here, we demonstrate that with the growing software support for SED-ML we can effectively exchange executable simulation descriptions.*

SED-ML is a format describing how a simulation experiment is carried out. The simulation itself is described in the interfaced format. Biological application is therefore viewed as a property of the interfaced standard.

*(Waltemath D et al.. BMC Systems Biology. 2011; 5:198.)