About EMBL-EBI and our role in Europe

European context

Europe has always been at the forefront of bioinformatics research, but as we move towards the European Union's goal of a single European Research Area, there is a greater need than ever for bioinformatics experts and experimental biologists throughout Europe to work together towards common goals that will expedite biological research. To this aim, EMBL-EBI coordinates the preparatory phase of the ELIXR project and several other EU-funded projects:

• ELIXIR will construct and operate a sustainable infrastructure for biological information in Europe to support life science research and its translation to medicine and the environment, the bio-industries and society.
• SLING Serving Life-science Information for the Next Generation (SLING) aims to optimise the use and development of research infrastructures in Europe and to help create new research infrastructures of pan-European interest in all fields of science and technology.
• IMPACT will develop and enhance the InterPro database and its contributing datasets: Gene3D, Pfam, PRINTS, ProDom, Prosite, SMART, SuperFamily.
• ENFIN will bring together experimentalists and computational biologists to develop the next generation of informatics resources for systems biology.
• BioSapiens aims to address the current fragmentation of European bioinformatics by creating a virtual research institute for genome annotation and by organising a European school for training in genome annotation.