Community Working Group on standards and infrastructure for predicted effector gene matrices and lists

Outline of effector gene prediction

The aim of the working group is to define recommendations for PEG list reporting. Our current metadata schema for predicted effector matrices and example YAML files are available in the metadata v3.1 tab here. We invite community members to benchmark your own results using these standards and share your experience. Please begin by reviewing the Instructions tab, which will guide you through the process.

For context and general recommendations take a look at our recent publication [Realizing the promise of genome-wide association studies for effector gene prediction, Costanzo et al]. To join the working group, please contact us.

 

Working Group Meetings

September 4th, 2025

Meeting Notes | Watch working group recording

  • Introduction & promoting/planning for ASHG Ancillary Session - Julie Jurgens
  • Summary of benchmarking activity - Julie Jurgens
  • Presentation of benchmarking results - Benchmarking Team
  • Fitting PEG matrix standards to PEG lists - Laura Harris/Aoife McMahon

July 9th, 2025

Meeting Notes | Watch working group recording

  • Update on benchmarking activity - Aoife McMahon
  • Discuss based on review of template - Aoife McMahon
  • High-level metadata intro, considerations (e.g., AI/ML readiness, ontologies) - Aoife McMahon
  • Metadata standards - Marcos Casado Barbero
  • Our attempts at abstraction of metadata schema - Yue Ji
  • Discussion: Metadata evidence categories and their suitability, informed by benchmarking - all

June 5th, 2025

Meeting Notes | Watch working group recording

  • Working Group Roadmap: ASHG & Beyond - Julie Jurgens
  • Data Content Standards - Aoife McMahon
  • Assigning Benchmarking Activity - Yue Ji & Noel Burtt
May 8th, 2025
Meeting Notes | Watch working group recording
  • Reflections - Maria Costanzo
  • Recap of September 2024 Predicted Effector Gene Workshop - Aoife McMahon
  • Introduction of the WG - Julie Jurgens
  • Moving from guidelines to standards for PEG data - Laura Harris

Working Group Members

NameInstitution
Zhanna BalkhiyarovaUniversity of Surrey
Marcos Casado BarberoEMBL-EBI
Oleg BorisovUniversity of Freiburg
MacKenzie BrandesBroad Institute
Noel BurttBroad Institute
Adam ButterworthUniversity of Cambridge
Nathalie ChamiIcahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Daniel ConsidineOpen Targets Genetics
Maria CostanzoBroad Institute
Ayse DemirkanUniversity of Surrey
Eric FaumanPfizer
Xiangyu GeOpen Targets Genetics
Laura HarrisEMBL-EBI
Karl HeilbronCharité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Quy HoangBroad Institute
Yue JiEMBL-EBI
Julie JurgensBroad Institute
Emrah KacarTrinity College Dublin
Kanika KanchanNIAID/NIH
Lillya KopanitsaWellcome Sanger Institute
Yong LiUniversity of Freiburg
Aoife McMahonEMBL-EBI
Ellen McDonaghEMBL-EBI/Open Targets Genetics
Nina OparinaUppsala University
Matt PahlChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia
Santhi RamachandranEMBL-EBI
Wafaa RashedAhram Canadian University-Egypt
Gabi RinckEMBL-EBI
Oliver RuebenackerBroad Institute
Abdurrahman ShiyanbolaUniversity of Surrey
Loz SouthamInstitute of Translational Genomics, Helmholtz Munich
Szymon SzyszkowskiOpen Targets Genetics
Sylvanus ToikumoUniversity of Pennsylvania
Yakov TsepilovWellcome Sanger Institute
Kyle VoganNature Genetics
Sean YaoInsilico Biosystems
Juliana Xavier de Miranda Cerqueira    University of Tampere
Chi ZhangByteDance
Norann ZaghloulNIDDK/NIH

First community workshop on standards and infrastructure for predicted effector gene lists 

 

Held September 16-17, 2024 | In-person at the Broad Institute, Cambridge MA USA | In-person at the European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK | By videoconference

 

Researchers who perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS) often aggregate and integrate multiple other evidence types in order to predict the effector (causal) genes at GWAS loci (see some examples). These predictions are a valuable outcome of GWAS, but in 2024 there were currently no community standards for organizing or sharing them, and the proliferation of multiple evidence types, methods, and presentation formats carried the risk of confusion. To spark discussion on how to address this gap, we held a community workshop on the standards, infrastructure and incentives required to promote and enable sharing, interoperability, and updating of predicted effector gene lists. In preparation for the workshop, we conducted a community survey about effector gene prediction (see survey results). 

The workshop had more than 80 participants from diverse institutions and career stages. A manuscript describing its proceedings is in preparation.

 

Organizing committee of the September 2024 workshop 

  

Aims of the workshop

  • Raise awareness of the diversity of approaches to creating predicted effector gene (PEG) lists
  • Identify challenges in sharing, maintaining, and updating PEG lists
  • Ensure that PEG lists with their supporting evidence and related metadata are FAIR and relevant to the user community
  • Begin to discuss a community standard for reporting PEG lists
  • Define strategies for evaluation and collation of PEG lists
  • Identify strategies for incentivizing implementation/use of the proposed standards

     

Agenda

Monday September 16, 2024: 9am - 1pm EDT / 2pm - 6pm BST | View video recording

  • 9:00 EDT / 2:00 BST: Introduction and welcome (Noël Burtt, Knowledge Portal Network)
  • 9:20 EDT / 2:20 BST: Who’s that causal gene? Lessons learned in manually annotating 100,000 GWAS SNPs (Eric Fauman, Pfizer Inc.)
  • 10:20 EDT / 3:20 BST: Open Targets as an end user of PEG lists (Yakov Tsepilov, Open Targets)
  • 10:35 EDT / 3:35 BST: Open discussion
  • 10:45 EDT / 3:45 BST: Break
  • 10:55 EDT / 3:55 BST: Overview of current gene prioritization efforts and PEG lists (Maria Costanzo, Knowledge Portal Network)
  • 11:25 EDT / 4:25 BST: 10-minute presentations of gene prioritizations
    • Cassandra Spracklen, University of Massachusetts
    • Brent Richards, McGill University
    • Adam Butterworth, University of Cambridge
  • 12:05 EDT / 5:05 BST: Open discussion: what are the key features of each approach and how do they compare?
  • 12:30 EDT / 5:30 BST: How ClinGen handles framework standardization with input from many invested users (Marina DiStefano, ClinGen)
  • 1:00 EDT / 6:00 BST: Adjourn

Tuesday September 17, 2024: 9am - 1pm EDT / 2pm - 6pm BST | View video recording

  • 9:00 EDT / 2:00 BST: GWAS Catalog’s experience developing GWAS standards (Laura Harris, GWAS Catalog)
  • 9:15 EDT / 2:15 BST: Curation and display of PEG lists in the Knowledge Portals (Maria Costanzo, Knowledge Portal Network)
  • 9:25 EDT / 2:25 BST: Curation and display of gold standard lists at Open Targets (Xiangyu Jack Ge, Open Targets)
  • 9:35 EDT / 2:35 BST: Open discussion: advantages/disadvantages of PEG list presentations
  • 9:50 EDT / 2:50 BST: Results of community survey (Maria Costanzo, Knowledge Portal Network)
  • 10:00 EDT / 3:00 BST: Standardization requirements for use of PEG lists as input for computational and AI methods (Jason Flannick, Boston Children’s Hospital)
  • 10:15 EDT / 3:15 BST: Break
  • 10:25 EDT / 3:25 BST: Proposal for PEG list standards (Yue Ji and Laura Harris, GWAS Catalog)
  • 10:40 EDT / 3:40 BST: 40-minute breakout group discussions about the proposed standards. Guiding questions will be provided.
  • 11:20 EDT / 4:20 BST: Breakout groups report back; further discussion in the larger group
  • 12:40 EDT / 5:40 BST: Wrap up (All organizers)
  • 1:00 EDT / 6:00 BST: Adjourn