European Bioinformatics Institute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), part of European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics. It is located by the small village of Hinxton, outside Cambridge, England. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is a pioneer of novel and developmental bioinformatics research. The EBI have specialist research and services groups providing a valuable resource of biological data and utilities to aid the scientific community in the understanding of genomic and proteomic data.

[edit] Groups at the EBI

Kim Henrick:

Macromolecular Structure Database (MSD)

MSD serves a list of protein quaternary structures (or Macromolecules) for every entry in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) [1]. It is also a member of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank and serves as one of the three worldwide sites responsible for accepting, processing and distributing macromolecular structure data.

Ewan Birney:

Ensembl

Ensembl provides, for just under 20 species, a genome browser, public access to the MySQL databases which contains the annotation data shown in the browser, and a Perl API for accessing the database. The group is divided fairly equally between the EBI and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute with gene builders and web team on the Sanger side, and core database and comparative genomics teams at the EBI.

Janet Thornton:

Thornton Group

This group has a wide range of research interests. Using biomolecular structures they are obtaining an understanding of enzyme active sites, protein-protein interactions, protein-ligand interactions, protein-DNA interactions and structure and modelling.

Nick Goldman:

Goldman Group

This group is developing methods for the analysis of DNA and amino acid sequences to study evolution.

Alvis Brazma:

Microarray Group

This group is using microarray technology to analyse the sequence data from the genome projects to identify which genes are expressed in a particular cell type of an organism.

Rolf Apweiler:

Sequence Database Group

This group is an amalgamation of all the primarily protein sequence and nucleotide sequence database groups based at the EBI.

Peter Rice:

Peter Rice Group

This group is investigating & advising on the e-Science and Grid technology requirements of the EMBL-EBI, through application development plus participation in standards development. See MyGrid and EMBOSS

Nicolas Le Novère:

Computational Neurobiology Group

The main goal of the group is to build realistic models of neuronal function at various levels, from the synapse to the micro-circuit, based on the precise knowledge of molecule functions and interactions (Systems Biology). Those models will provide a deeper understanding of neuronal signalling, and will help to reproduce neuronal disorders in silico. One of the main project of the group is BioModels Database, which is a data resource that allows biologists to store, search and retrieve published mathematical models of biological interests.

Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann:

Rebholz Group

The group focuses on extraction of facts from scientific literature in molecular biology. The main methods are based on Finite State Automatons (FSAs). In the past we have worked on the identification of protein-protein interactions, acronyms and descriptions of mutations.

Wolfgang Huber:

Huber Group

The group's research focuses on the following: Gene transcription and protein-DNA binding analysis with DNA microarrays, Statistical Computing and High throughput cellular assays and genetic interaction screens.

Henning Hermjakob:

Proteomics Services Team

The team provides databases and tools for the deposition, distribution and analysis of proteomics and proteomics-related data.

Nicky Mulder:

InterPro Group

This team is responsible for the development and maintenance of the InterPro project. InterPro is an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, and is used for small and large-scale functional classification of proteins.

Nick Luscombe:

Regulation Group

The Regulation Group's research focuses on the genomic analysis of regulatory systems.

Paul Bertone:

Bertone Group

This group's research lies in the genomic analysis of developmental pathways, with a particular focus on differentiation and lineage commitment in mammalian embryonic stem cells.

Peter Stoehr and Weimin Zhu:

Database Application Group

The Database Applications Group consists of software engineers from the Sequence Database Group, and database professionals from the Database Support Team, which belongs to the EBI IT Service Group. The group mandate is to provide support to software and database development for new projects, and maintenance support for the projects in production. The group is continually conducting research in software engineering and database technologies, in order to meet new requirements from user community, and to find better solutions to the challenges in areas such as solid application framework, data integration and best practices.

Petteri Jokinen:

Systems Group

This group is in charge of the maintenance and the development of a state-of-art computing infrastructure on which most EBI operations are run.

Peter Stoehr and Rodrigo Lopez:

External Services Group

This group is in charge of the development and maintenance of web and email services for the user community. See also EBI External Services

The bioinformatics educational resource

2can Bioinformatics

This site provides short and concise introductions to basic concepts in molecular and cell biology and bioinformatics. The main emphasis is placed on making it as easy as possible for the user to understand which tools and databases are available from the EBI and from sites belonging to its collaborators. The site content aims to make these services easier and more accessible but also provides links to other sites where similar resources are maintained and well supported.