Sample and Experimental Tracking and Documentation: Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and Workflow Management
LIMS and Workflow Management Roadmap
Objective: Provide systems for experiment design, sample specification, sample tracking and metadata recording, workflow management, process optimization and documentation, QA, and sharing of such data across facilities or projects.
LIMS Impact
The goal of creating—from genome sequence—a knowledgebase for efficiently understanding the functions of microbes and communities requires many iterations of modeling, experimentation, and simulation. LIMS ensures the rigor of experimental data by linking it with associated QA/QC factors, characterizations, protocols, and related experiments and data.
LIMS maintains a detailed pedigree for each sample by capturing processing parameters, protocols, stocks, tests, and analytical results for the sample’s complete life cycle. Project and study data also are maintained to define each sample in the context of research tasks it supports. LIMS will be required for each analytical pipeline to track all aspects of sample handling.
LIMS Requirements for GTL
Scientists funded by the GTL program and users of GTL facilities will conduct many thousands of experiments, each with hundreds to thousands of individual samples upon which several analytical measurements will be made. Although a number of LIMS are sold by commercial vendors, no single LIMS will be able to meet the large-scale, varied needs of all GTL facilities and projects. The broad range of experimental protocols used in the facilities and in the laboratories of GTL investigators will require LIMS customizations flexible enough to meet constantly changing requirements (e.g., new experimentation, protocols, parameters, and data formats).
Throughput is vital to the GTL facilities, so care must be exercised in the design of systems critical to the facility’s uptime. The core LIMS at each facility is just such a system. When LIMS is not operating, data cannot be processed and the facility cannot run. LIMS must be very robust, highly available, and secured in ways similar to an institution’s critical information-technology systems. An external data query or database operation must not impact LIMS or operations. Databases assimilating a facility’s data must be inaccessible to hackers, and the system and databases for recording data should be separate from those for sharing data.
A working group will be established to examine existing and future needs of GTL grantees and research centers. The group will assess and analyze existing LIMS as a prelude to adopting or creating a flexible and interoperable LIMS across a number of laboratory and center environments.
