Motivation Recent advancements in genomic technologies have enabled high throughput cost-effective generation of ‘omics’ data from M.tuberculosis (M.tb) isolates, which then gets shared via a number of heterogeneous publicly available biological databases. Albeit useful, fragmented curation negatively impacts the researcher’s ability to leverage the data via federated queries. Results We present Combat-TB-NeoDB, an integrated M.tb ‘omics’ knowledge-base. Combat-TB-NeoDB is based on Neo4j and was created by binding the labeled property graph model to a suitable ontology namely Chado. Combat-TB-NeoDB enables researchers to execute complex federated queries by linking prominent biological databases, and supplementary M.tb variants data from published literature. Availability and implementation The Combat-TB-NeoDB (https://neodb.sanbi.ac.za) repository and all tools mentioned in this manuscript are freely available at https://github.com/COMBAT-TB. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

While biomedical research based on genetically diverse data and samples from the African continent has incredible potential to address health issues, there exists the risk of exploitative research practices, particularly when studies are conducted in environments where public knowledge of scientific concepts may be lacking. [1,2] It is this exploitation that generates mistrust in research, and ultimately has far-reaching consequences. [1,3,4] Increased misunderstanding and mistrust undermine research potential, and become a barrier to public participation. In medical research, the costs associated with recruitment and retention of a diversity of sample donors are not just financial. A lack of donor diversity in a research study may result in the introduction of bias, and lead to disproportionate research activities into conditions or diseases that affect specific populations. [5] The value of creating and increasing public understanding of science through meaningful engagement platforms cannot be underestimated. For example, a study conducted on clinical trial enrolment and retention in Nigeria established that unwillingness of female respondents to participate in a clinical trial was strongly associated with low levels of awareness of and education on the clinical trials. [6] Meaningful engagement not only increases trust in science, based on positive perceptions of social benefit, but also promotes understanding of the relevance of science and research -which is imperative when attempting to garner support from the public, and government. [5,7,8] Positive science outreach can build strong coalitions and inspire members of the public to become champions in their communities. Science communication of broad key concepts to receptive communities becomes a gateway to more studyspecific engagement, and the active participation of stakeholders leads to capacity development and science translation. [1,9] Recent initiatives involving the co-operation of various consortia and government departments has led to a substantial increase in the number of biobanks in Africa. In general, biobanks are referred to as 'structured collections of biological samples and associated data, stored for the purposes of present and future research' . [10] Biorepositories that collect biological samples from humans can be defined as 'an organised collection of human biological material and associated data from participants, often stored for an unlimited period of time, for the purpose of health research, and managed according to professional standards under a documented governance structure' . [11] The principle of a standardised biobank that serves the research community clearly points to the involvement of a diverse multitude of stakeholders, all of whom must be engaged in order to increase the legitimacy and co-operative nature of biobanks. [1] While researchers in the biomedical field are knowledgeable regarding the technical aspects of genetic research This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

While the reduction in the cost of WGS is making sequencing more affordable in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), public health laboratories in these countries seldom have access to bioinformaticians and system support engineers adept at using the Linux command line and complex bioinformatics software. The COMBAT-TB Workbench provides an open-source, modular, easy-to-deploy and -use environment for managing and analyzing M. tuberculosis WGS data and thereby makes WGS usable in practice in the LMIC context.