Software developers Optive Research and Synthematix have joined the Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium (I3C).

Optive and Synthematix -- cheminformatics and discovery software companies -- said they joined the I3C because of the appeal of improving informatics application interoperability.

"Despite the standards that exist today in life science computing, there remains room for significant innovation in software application interoperability," said Optive president and chief scientific officer Dr Robert Pearlman in a statement.

One of the major efforts of the I3C today is the establishment and adoption of the Life Science Identifier (LSID) as an open standard for enabling informatics application interoperability. Before the formal announcement was made, Synthematix was investigating the use of LSID to make it easier to incorporate and access a wide variety of informatics data and applications from within its application architecture, which lets companies and individual chemists build complex chemistry workflows.

"Conceptually, I like the open, collaborative nature of LSID -- it seems like a natural fit for us," said Robin Smith, Synthematix's founder and chief science officer.

The addition of Optive Research and Synthematix helps round out an interesting mix of vendors and end-user organisations who comprise the membership list of the I3C. For instance, some of the existing vendor members include Avaki, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Platform Computing and TurboWorx. Among the end-user commercial and academic organisations are Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Co, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, The Sanger Institute, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), and the Whitehead Institute/Centre for Genome Research.