Sbol Visual: Standard Schematic Diagrams for Synthetic Genetic Constructs

Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) Visual is an effort to standardize visual representations of synthetic biological constructs. SBOL Visual 1.0 consists of a set of standardized glyphs for representing designs of synthetic genetic systems as contiguous constructs. Each symbol corresponds to a sequence element in physical DNA, including simple regulatory elements such as promoter or restriction sites. The symbols can be used as stencils to make illustrations on the computer or by hand, for rendering in a web browser, as images for software design, or as a formal symbology for aiding communication and instruction. SBOL Visual symbols are currently used by a number of commercial and academic software tools. SBOL Visual is particularly suited to represent the design of multi-component artificial genetic constructs, and we cite several examples where SBOL Visual has been employed for scientific descriptions of such constructs.

SBOL Visual is a free and open standard with resources made available for the broadest possible use. The symbols are provided for personal, academic, and commercial use in a variety of image formats, including PNG and SVG. SBOL Visual is developed by members of SBOL Developers Group as a visual, human-readable counterpart to the SBOL standard data format for representing the design of genetic constructs to ensure cross-compatibility with other biological standards. We encourage any interested practitioners to download the images, use and modify them freely, suggest changes, and join the SBOL Visual community to participate in developing the standard: http://www.sbolstandard.org/visual