Data resources
We provide freely available data and bioinformatics services.
We maintain the world’s most comprehensive range of molecular data resources, developed in collaboration with colleagues worldwide, and open to all.
At EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we help scientists realise the potential of big data in biology, exploiting complex information to make discoveries that benefit humankind.
EMBL-EBI is international, innovative and interdisciplinary, and a champion of open data in the life sciences.
We are part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an intergovernmental research organisation funded by over 20 member states, prospect and associate member states.
We are situated on the Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge, UK, one of the world’s largest concentrations of scientific and technical expertise in genomics.
We provide freely available data and bioinformatics services.
We maintain the world’s most comprehensive range of molecular data resources, developed in collaboration with colleagues worldwide, and open to all.
We contribute to the advancement of biology through computational research.
In the era of personal genomics, our computational research is increasingly translational and related to human health, disease and the environment.
We provide advanced bioinformatics training to scientists at all levels.
Our hands-on bioinformatics training helps experimental and computational biologists make the most of our wide range of data resources.
We help disseminate cutting-edge technologies to industry.
We support companies of all sizes that want to harness the power of bioinformatics for research and development.
As an ELIXIR Node, we support the coordination of biological data provision throughout Europe.
EMBL-EBI is a pivotal partner in several European emerging research infrastructures, including the ELIXIR infrastructure for biological information.
As one of the six sites of EMBL, we are contributing to its new five-year scientific programme, Molecules to Ecosystems, which started in 2022.
As part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the largest part of our funding comes from the governments of EMBL’s member states.
Other major funders include the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), via the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council, as well as the European Commission, the US National Institutes of Health, Wellcome, and members of our Industry Programme.
The UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has awarded major grants in support of EMBL-EBI’s role as a host to the ELIXIR Hub and a key ELIXIR Node. These funds have been used to develop a robust compute infrastructure that will allow EMBL-EBI to efficiently manage an ever-expanding and diversifying range of public data services.
We gratefully acknowledge the continued support of EMBL member states and other funding organisations. Our funders make it possible for us to deliver open data resources, perform excellent research and provide professional training for the global scientific community.
In 1980, the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Data Library (now part of the European Nucleotide Archive) was established in EMBL Heidelberg, with the goal of creating a central database of DNA sequences.
What began as a modest task of abstracting information from scientific literature soon grew into a major database activity, with researchers submitting their data directly and an ever-increasing demand for highly-skilled informaticians to manage it all.
High-profile genome projects brought more attention to the initiative, and the commercial sector began to see the relevance of public data.
In 1992, the EMBL Council voted to establish EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) on the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, where it would be in close proximity to the major sequencing efforts at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
The transition of two major bioinformatics services from Heidelberg to Hinxton began in 1992 and in September 1994, EMBL-EBI was firmly established in the UK.
The European Nucleotide Archive and the protein sequence resource UniProt (then known as Swiss-Prot–TrEMBL) were the original EMBL-EBI databases. Since then, EMBL-EBI has played a major part in the bioinformatics revolution.
We now provide the world’s most comprehensive range of molecular databases and offer an extensive training programme. Our basic research programme has grown substantially, and remains closely tied with the evolution of our resources.
Data at EMBL-EBI spans genomics, proteins, expression, small molecules, protein structures, systems, ontologies and scientific literature.
Researchers today depend on access to large data sets spanning different data types.
Life-science experiments are generating a flood of data every day, which is good news for researchers but poses practical challenges. The amount of data produced is doubling twice as quickly as computer storage and processing power, and this rate is increasing.
Bioinformatics makes it possible to collect, store and add value to these data so that researchers in many fields can retrieve and analyse them efficiently. EMBL-EBI is one of very few places in the world that has the capacity and expertise to fulfil this important task.
Biological data is the bedrock of life science research. Here are a few examples of how it can be used in beneficial ways: