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About EMBL-EBI and our role in EuropeWho we are The EBI is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics. The Institute manages databases of biological data including nucleic acid, protein sequences and macromolecular structures. As we move towards understanding biology at the systems level, access to large data sets of
many different types has become crucial. Technologies such as genome-sequencing,
microarrays, proteomics and structural genomics have provided ‘parts
lists’ for many living organisms, and researchers are now focusing
on how the individual components fit
together to build systems. The hope is that scientists will be able
to translate their new
insights into improving the quality of life for everyone. However, the high-throughput
revolution also
threatens to drown us in data. There is an ongoing, and growing, need
to collect, store
and curate all this information in ways that allow its efficient retrieval
and exploitation. The European Bioinformatics Institute is one of the few places in the world that has the resources and expertise to fulfil this important task. To view our highlights from over the past year, see our latest Annual Report.
The EMBL-EBI lies in the 55 acres of landscaped parkland in rural Cambridgeshire that make up the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus. The Campus also houses the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, making it one of the world's largest concentrations of expertise in genomics and bioinformatics. The EMBL-EBI grew out of EMBL's pioneering work to provide public biological databases to the research community (see History). Although we are geographically separated from EMBL's main headquarters in Heidelberg and its other sites in Grenoble, Hamburg and Monterotondo, the EMBL-EBI is an integral part of EMBL. We play a vital role in achieving EMBL's mission of providing a top-quality research environment that also develops new technologies, and provides services and training to Europe's molecular life scientists. Like the other EMBL sites, we have an extremely cosmopolitan staff base, and alumni who have moved on to successful careers all over the world.
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