The Outercurve Foundation has announced the acceptance of the .NET Bio project into the "research accelerators" gallery, which it oversees as a not-for-profit open source foundational body. The platform-, technology- and license-agnostic organization has brought the language-neutral reusable .NET library and API under its auspices on the basis of it helping to support the development of applications for bioinformatics research.

This open source project, which reportedly has the support of bioinformatics researchers from a number of educational institutions, was contributed by Microsoft, the foundation's primary sponsor. As the fourth project to join the research accelerators gallery, .NET Bio contributors will (if accepted into the fold) be able to increase the project's focus on improving community development practices to broaden its capabilities and usefulness to the life sciences community.

"The .NET Bio project shows the power of community and collaboration in the scientific and research communities," said Paula Hunter, executive director, Outercurve Foundation. "The contribution of such a significant and far-reaching project will help researchers expand participation in planned development engagements within the USA, Brazil, Colombia, and Australia. From this point, .NET Bio will enable researchers to share data and development methodologies to support a range of life sciences research projects."

.NET Bio, formerly known as the Microsoft Biology Foundation, is a bioinformatics toolkit that includes a library of commonly used bioinformatics functions. The .NET Bio project's V1 release enables different data sets to communicate, while its tools are aligned to reduce processing time and enable scientists to focus on research.

"As part of the Outercurve Foundation, .NET Bio project committers will have the resources and community participation to support more complex and very large plant genomes by working with universities and consortia around the world,' said Tony Hey, Outercurve Board member and corporate VP of Microsoft research connections. The project brings a strong history of consistent and dedicated community management to the Outercurve Foundation.'

The Outercurve Foundation has three galleries and 17 projects. Galleries include the ASP.NET open source gallery, the research accelerators gallery, and the data, language, and system interoperability (DLSI) gallery.