MPEG-G
MPEG-G (ISO / IEC 23092) is an ISO/IEC standard designed for genomic information representation by the collaboration of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 9 (MPEG) and ISO TC 276 "Biotechnology" Work Group 5. The goal of the standard is to provide interoperable solutions for data storage, access, and protection across different possible implementations for data information generated by high-throughput sequencing machines and their subsequent processing and analysis. The standard is composed of different parts, each one addressing a specific aspect, such as compression, metadata association, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and a reference software for data decoding. Together with the reference decoder software, commercial and open source implementations started to be available in 2019, covering progressively more of the published parts of the standard.

Background
The advent of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has revolutionized the field of quantitative biology. Availability of large collections of genomic information has now entered everyday practice and has become a cornerstone of a number of disciplines, ranging from biological research to personalized medicine in the clinic. At the moment, genomic information is mostly exchanged through a variety of data formats, such as FASTA/FASTQ for unaligned sequencing reads and SAM/BAM/CRAM for aligned reads. Biological studies typically produce genomic annotation data such as mapping statistics, quantitative browser tracks, variants, genome functional annotations, gene expression data, and Hi-C contact matrices. These diverse types of downstream genomic data are currently represented in different formats such as VCF, BED, GFF, etc., sometimes with loosely defined semantics.The ISO/IEC 23092 (MPEG-G) standard aims to provide a unified format for the efficient representation and compression of such diverse data, both for file storage and data transport. In order to do that, the standard is divided in several parts.

Structure of the standard 
The MPEG-G standard utilizes technology and data representation architectures previously validated in the field of digital media. They allow to compress and transport genome sequencing data even in complex scenarios, for instance when access is needed to large amounts of possibly distributed data, or when part of the data needs to be encrypted for privacy reasons. Conceptually, such requirements lead to the definition of a number of mutually interrelated mechanisms, which are summarized in the following list:
 Data format and compression 
 Data streaming
 Compressed file concatenation
 Incremental update of sequencing data and metadata
 Selective access to compressed data, e.g. fast queries by genomic range
 Metadata association
 Enforcement of privacy rules
 Selective encryption of data and metadata
 Annotation and linkage of genomic segments.
In turn, some of these topic have been collected together, in order to make the standard easier to understand and implement. As a result, the ISO/IEC 23092 standard is physically structured as a series of separate document, as follows:

ISO/IEC 23092-1 MPEG-G Part 1 
To be defined.

ISO/IEC 23092-2 MPEG-G Part 2 
To be defined.

ISO/IEC 23092-3 MPEG-G Part 3 
ISO/IEC 23092-3 specifies information metadata, protection metadata, auxiliary fields, SAM interoperability and programming interfaces of genomic information. It defines:

 Metadata storage and interpretation for the different encapsulation levels as specified in ISO/IEC 23092-1;
 Protection elements providing confidentiality, integrity and privacy rules at the different encapsulation levels specified in ISO/IEC 23092-1;
 How to associate auxiliary fields to encoded reads;
 Mechanisms for backward compatibility with existing SAM content, and exportation to this format;
 Interfaces to access genomic information coded in compliance with ISO/IEC 23092-1 and ISO/IEC 23092-2.

ISO/IEC 23092-4 MPEG-G Part 4 

ISO/IEC 23092-4 specifies genomic information representation reference software, referred to as the genomic model (GM). It consists of two components: the reference encoder software and the reference decoder software. While the reference decoder software is provided to assess the conformance to the requirements of ISO/IEC 23092-1, ISO/IEC 23092-2 and ISO/IEC 23092-6, the reference encoder software serves as a guide for the implementation of the aforementioned standards. The reference encoder software called Genie is an open source software developed by a group of individuals from multiple universities and companies around the world. It features the following components:

ISO/IEC 23092-5 MPEG-G Part 5 
To be defined.

ISO/IEC 23092-6 MPEG-G Part 6 
To be defined.

Filename extensions 
To be defined.

See also
 MPEG
 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29

References

External links 
 mpeg-g.org 
 MPEG web site
 ISO/IEC 23092-1
 ISO/IEC 23092-2
 ISO/IEC 23092-3
 ISO/IEC 23092-4
 ISO/IEC 23092-5
 ISO/IEC 23092-6

ISO/IEC standards
Open standards covered by patents