Key Community milestones
- Initial Idea for the Focus Group: Early 2022
- Horizon Europe INFRA-DEV EuroFAANG project launched: January 2023
- First presentation to Heads of Nodes of the Focus Group: May 2024
- GenoPHEnix Proposal submitted to the ESFRI Roadmap: April 2025
- Presentation of progress to Heads of Nodes: May 2025
- Community formally established: December 2025
- Community white paper published: January 2026
Community goal
The wellbeing of domestic animals is essential to sustainable farming systems, keeping pets for companionship, and the One Health approach linking the health of people, animals and the environment. However, domestic animals face several challenges across different contexts, including climate changes, emerging diseases, welfare concerns, and wider societal expectations to reduce the use of animals in research.
Understanding how genetic information (the genome) gives rise to observable traits (the phenome) is essential for predicting how domestic animals will meet the challenges of the future.
The Domestic Animals Genome and Phenome Community connects researchers and data scientists across species and countries to accelerate genome and phenome research in domestic animals. The Community works to develop a coordinated, open and standardised data life cycle.
Community objectives
The Domestic Animals Genome and Phenome Community builds on the foundations established by the global Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) Consortium, European Commission-funded projects under the EuroFAANG umbrella, European infrastructures for farmed animal phenotyping, and nationally- funded projects for farmed and companion animals.
While data standards and work flows are well established for genome data, particularly for functional genomics data via the FAANG Data Portal, the same structure does not currently exist for phenome data. With this in mind the goals of the community are to:
Develop FAIR standards for genome and phenome analyses
- Develop shared metadata standards, and minimal reporting information for phenotyping experiments
- Create data visualisation tools capable of representing dynamic datasets, such as behavioural time series
- Expanding the FAANG Data Portal to include new data types and ELIXIR Core Data Resources
Enable responsible data sharing and infrastructure alignment
- Explore secure and federated approaches for sharing proprietary datasets with industry stakeholders
- Collaborate with other ELIXIR communities, to consolidate frameworks and address shared stakeholder needs
- Build links with existing and emerging ESFRI infrastructures, such as GenoPHEnix
Build capacity for genome-to-phenome analyses workflows
- Provide consolidated computational tools and pipelines for genomic analysis
- Develop new workflows that integrate omics data to understand the genomic drivers of traits such as disease resistance and resilience
- Improve data usability through FAIR data-checking workflows based on the FAANG standards for omics data
Understand challenges across the data life cycle
- Develop tools to capture collecting minimal reporting information for phenotyping experiments at the point of data entry
- Provide submission tools that improve interoperability and facilitate submission of linked genome and phenome datasets across multiple ELIXIR Core Data Resources
- Support the reduction, refinement and replacement of animal use by linking multiple data types from in vitro and cellular systems across ELIXIR resources, contributing to the 3Rs in animal research
Community impact
The Domestic Animals Genome and Phenome Community will deliver impact in five key areas:
- Leveraging FAIR data and data resources to enhance functional and integrative genomics approaches to understanding host-pathogen interactions
- Consolidating genomic data resources for conserving biodiversity at local and regional levels with well- developed data standards for biobanking
- Developing tools and workflows for pangenome analysis and structural variant effect prediction across breeds and populations adapted to extremes of environments to inform breeding and mitigate future challenges
- Exploring ways to improve accessibility to and visualisation of dynamic datasets, including such as behavioural time series data, to support animal welfare research
- Improving interoperability across ELIXIR resources for submission of multiple data types from in vitro cellular systems, maximising data reuse and reducing reliance on animal experimentation
- Contact physilia.chua@elixir-europe.org or domesticanimals@elixir-europe.org if you would like to know more about the Community's work.
- Read the Community white paper.
Leadership
