Recent technological advances, both experimental and computational, make it possible to address key questions that will bring a quantitative, mechanistic, and molecular understanding of environmental effects on human biology. Human Ecosystems research and services at EMBL aim to arrive at a molecular understanding of how we interact with our physical, biological, and social environments to identify avenues for the mitigation and treatment of disease.
The Exposome Moonshot Forum in Washington DC on the 12th – 15th of May 2025 saw an international network of stakeholders gather for a four day event at the John Hopkin’s Bloomberg Centre for a series of plenary and small working group discussions to develop plans for future exposome…
We were delighted to host this year’s Human Ecosystems Retreat at European Bioinformatics Institute | EMBL-EBI. The retreat brought together our service and research teams to share recent work, explore new collaborations, and plan our next steps in identifying gene x environment interactions…
Insect populations are declining globally, and the drivers of this trend are complex and interconnected. Among these, sublethal effects of pesticides—often overlooked in standard environmental risk assessment methods—plays a significant role. The impact of pesticides on human health is also a…
By Marcella Santiago, Visiting Predoctoral Fellow, Zimmermann Group, EMBL Heidelberg In today’s world, agrochemicals and plasticizers are ubiquitous, playing critical roles in agriculture and industry. However, their impact on human health, particularly through interactions with gut microbiota,…
The GWAS Catalog The GWAS Catalog provides an archival and search service for detailed and richly-annotated data from human genome-wide association studies (GWAS). These data can be searched, browsed, visualised and downloaded on the website (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/). The Catalog includes…
For the first time, institutions across the Barcelona area gathered for the Barcelona Exposome Symposium, an event on the 25th September 2024 designed to promote collaboration within the growing exposome research community. The exposome is the integrated compilation of all the physical, chemical,…
We are delighted to announce that Cornelius Gross, Interim Head of EMBL Rome, has joined the Earth, Brain and Health Commission. In partnership with Nature Mental Health, the commission aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of world-class leaders to develop cutting edge and…
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) focusing on common single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) have advanced our understanding of the genetic causes of many traits and diseases. However, for some conditions, this method is reaching its limits. To better understand the genetic basis of diseases,…
EMBL researchers and collaborators have shown gut bacteria can alter how some carcinogens are metabolised and distributed elsewhere, that leads to bladder cancer. The study can help better understand how individuals' gut microbiota affects tumour growth.