Markereid

Markereid is a proposed unique identifier system intended for biological markers in genomic and related data. It seeks to provide stable, unambiguous references to markers such as single nucleotide polymorphisms, indels, structural variants, and expression markers, enabling consistent cross-database annotation and data sharing.

A markereid typically encodes several elements: marker type, reference genome assembly, genomic coordinates, and a version or release tag. A representative form might look like MRK:SNP:GRCh38:chr7:142000000-142000001:v1.0. Registries or repositories would assign and maintain markereids and host mappings to existing accession numbers or synonyms.

Rationale for the approach includes improving data integration, reproducibility, and programmatic lookup. By consolidating disparate names under a persistent identifier, researchers can link results across studies and databases even as resources evolve.

Status and history: The markereid concept has appeared in scholarly discussions and community proposals but lacks formal standardization. Several competing schemes exist for marker identifiers, including pure accession numbers, database-specific IDs, and CURIE-like prefixes. Debates focus on governance, version control, resolution, and long-term persistence.

See also: Biomarker, genomic marker, persistent identifier, accession number, CURIE, data standardization.