Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) Visual is a graphical standard for genetic engineering. It consists of symbols representing DNA subsequences, including regulatory elements and DNA assembly features. These symbols can be used to draw illustrations for communication and instruction, and as image assets for computer-aided design. SBOL Visual is a community standard, freely available for personal, academic, and commercial use (Creative Commons CC0 license). We provide prototypical symbol images that have been used in scientific publications and software tools. We encourage users to use and modify them freely, and to join the SBOL Visual community: http://www.sbolstandard.org/visual.

Synthetic biology builds upon the techniques and successes of genetics, molecular biology, and metabolic engineering by applying engineering principles to the design of biological systems. The field still faces substantial challenges, including long development times, high rates of failure, and poor reproducibility. One method to ameliorate these problems is to improve the exchange of information about designed systems between laboratories. The synthetic biology open language (SBOL) has been developed as a standard to support the specification and exchange of biological design information in synthetic biology, filling a need not satisfied by other pre-existing standards. This document details version 2.3.0 of SBOL, which builds upon version 2.2.0 published in last year’s JIB Standards in Systems Biology special issue. In particular, SBOL 2.3.0 includes means of succinctly representing sequence modifications, such as insertion, deletion, and replacement, an extension to support organization and attachment of experimental data derived from designs, and an extension for describing numerical parameters of design elements. The new version also includes specifying types of synthetic biology activities, unambiguous locations for sequences with multiple encodings, refinement of a number of validation rules, improved figures and examples, and clarification on a number of issues related to the use of external ontology terms.

No abstract

People who are engineering biological organisms often find it useful to communicate in diagrams, both about the structure of the nucleic acid sequences that they are engineering and about the functional relationships between sequence features and other molecular species . Some typical practices and conventions have begun to emerge for such diagrams. The Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual (SBOL Visual) has been developed as a standard for organizing and systematizing such conventions in order to produce a coherent language for expressing the structure and function of genetic designs. This document details version 2.1 of SBOL Visual, which builds on the prior SBOL Visual 2.0 standard by expanding diagram syntax to include methods for showing modular structure and mappings between elements of a system, interactions arrows that can split or join (with the glyph at the split or join indicating either superposition or a chemical process), and adding new glyphs for indicating genomic context (e.g., integration into a plasmid or genome) and for stop codons.

The possibility for quantum and classical communication to coexist on the same fibre is important for deployment and widespread adoption of quantum key distribution (QKD) and, more generally, a future quantum internet. While coexistence has been demonstrated for different QKD implementations, a comprehensive investigation for measurement-device independent (MDI) QKDa recently proposed QKD protocol that cannot be broken by quantum hacking that targets vulnerabilities of single-photon detectors -is still missing. Here we experimentally demonstrate that MDI-QKD can operate simultaneously with at least five 10 Gbps bidirectional classical communication channels operating at around 1550 nm wavelength and over 40 km of spooled fibre, and we project communication rates in excess of 10 THz when moving the quantum channel from the third to the second telecommunication window. The similarity of MDI-QKD with quantum repeaters suggests that classical and generalised quantum networks can co-exist on the same fibre infrastructure. Key rate (R ) Data rate (in Gbps) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate experimental 2x20 km Bidirectional Key rate experimental 2x40 km Bidirectional Key rate (R ) Data rate (in Gbps) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate experimental 2x20 km Bidirectional Key rate experimental 2x40 km Bidirectional Key rate (R ) Data rate (in Gbps) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate experimental 2x20 km Bidirectional Key rate experimental 2x40 km Bidirectional Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1532nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidirectional (1532nm) Key rate experimental 2x20 km Bidirectional Key rate experimental 2x40 km Bidirectional Key rate (R ) Data rate (in Gbps) Key rate for 2x20km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x20km Bidirectional (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Co-propagating (1310nm) Key rate for 2x40km Bidi...