European Bioinformatics Institute

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

[edit] Groups

Macromolecular Structure Database, MSD (Kim Henrick): 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 is of the three worldwide sites that accept, process and distribute macromolecular structure data.
Ensembl (Ewan Birney): Provides, for almost 30 species, a genome browser, public access to the MySQL databases of annotations 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.
Thornton Group (Janet Thornton): Using biomolecular structures, tries to understand enzyme active sites, protein-protein interactions, protein-ligand interactions, protein-DNA interactions and structure and modelling.
Goldman Group (Nick Goldman): Develops methods for the analysis of DNA and amino acid sequences to study evolution.
Microarray Group (Alvis Brazma): Uses 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.
Sequence Database Group (Rolf Apweiler): An amalgamation of all the primarily protein sequence and nucleotide sequence database groups based at the EBI.
Peter Rice Group (Peter Rice): Investigates & advises on the e-Science and Grid technology requirements of the EMBL-EBI, through application development plus participation in standards development. See MyGrid and EMBOSS
Computational Neurobiology Group (Nicolas Le Novère): Aims to build realistic models of neuronal function at various levels, from the synapse to the micro-circuit, based on 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. A main project of the group is the BioModels Database, which allows biologists to store, search and retrieve published mathematical models of biological interest.
Rebholz Group (Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann): 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.
Huber Group (Wolfgang Huber): Focuses on gene transcription and protein-DNA binding analysis with DNA microarrays; statistical computing and high-throughput cellular assays and genetic interaction screens.
Proteomics Services Team (Henning Hermjakob): Provides databases and tools for the deposition, distribution and analysis of proteomics and proteomics-related data.
InterPro Group (Nicky Mulder): Develops and maintains the InterPro project, an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites that is used for small and large-scale functional classification of proteins.
Regulation Group (Nick Luscombe): Focuses on the genomic analysis of regulatory systems.
Bertone Group (Paul Bertone): Genomic analysis of developmental pathways, with a focus on differentiation and lineage commitment in mammalian embryonic stem cells.
Database Application Group (Peter Stoehr and Weimin Zhu): 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. It supports software and database development for new projects, and maintains support for the projects in production. It continually does research in software engineering and database technologies, to meet new requirements from users, and to find better solutions to the challenges in areas such as solid application framework, data integration and best practices.
Systems Group (Petteri Jokinen): Maintains and develops state-of-art computing infrastructure on which most EBI operations are run.
External Services Group (Peter Stoehr and Rodrigo Lopez): Develops and maintains web and email services for users. See also EBI External Services
Bioinformatics educational resource 2can Bioinformatics: Provides short and concise introductions to basic concepts in molecular and cell biology and bioinformatics. It focuses on making it as easy for the user to understand which tools and databases are available from the EBI and and collaborating sites. It also provides links to other sites where similar resources are maintained and well supported.