BBSRC and the EMBL- EBI have welcomed news that funding has been earmarked from the UK's Large Facilities Capital Fund for ELIXIR - the European Life-science Infrastructure for Biological Information.
ELIXIR is a pan-European initiative that aims to operate a sustainable infrastructure for biological information in Europe.
It will provide public access to the information on the building blocks of life, including genes, proteins and complex networks.
This will support life-science research and its translation to medicine and the environment, the bio-industries and society to deliver economic growth to the UK, Europe and beyond.
Consistent with the movement towards open access to data and publications, ELIXIR will make important information freely available to researchers across academia and industry.
This project, if approved, will allow the construction of ELIXIR's central hub at EMBL-EBI in Hinxton near Cambridge, ensuring the maintenance and expansion of essential biological data resources to support bioscience researchers working in many disciplines.
ELIXIR works through a network of nodes distributed throughout Europe and coordinated at EMBL-EBI.
BBSRC leads the funding strategy element of the project and has already contributed GBP10m funding towards the establishment of ELIXIR.
The Medical Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Wellcome Trust also support ELIXIR.
Denmark, Finland, Spain and Sweden have already committed funds towards developing the ELIXIR network.
ELIXIR has the potential to transform biosciences research, leading to major advances in: healthy ageing - linking biomedical and biological data resources to facilitate understanding of diseases of old age, drive earlier diagnosis and improve disease prevention and management; food security - easy access to genomes of animals, plants, insects and pathogens for crop improvement and improved health, welfare and productivity of livestock; biotech and pharma industry - facilitation of pre-commercial research collaborations with the potential to attract more companies to Europe; environmental change - support for researchers who are monitoring ocean life, understanding effects of climate change on species diversity and developing new methods to tackle pollution and waste; also, the development of new plant-based sources for sustainable bioenergy; bioenergy and industrial biotechnology - access to the very diverse genomes and metagenomes of plants and microbes, as well as biochemical data derived therefrom, to support research into sustainable bioenergy and industrial biotechnology applications.
There is great potential for ELIXIR to support the maintenance and development of the knowledge-based bioeconomy in the UK and Europe, and promote the development of Europe-based research and development business in a range of fields, including pharmaceuticals and agriculture.
