At his Not Invented Here blog, Harvard School of Public Health's Oliver Hofmann discusses the Broad Institute's David Jaffe's keynote talk at Beyond the Genome 2011's Genome Informatics Pre-Meeting held in Washington, DC, this week. Hofmann summarizes Jaffe's key points on genome assembly challenges during this time of "rapid technological change." According to Hofmann, Jaffe stressed that toward the end-goal of improved linear assemblies, changes to format requirements are needed.