Understanding the causes of disease to find new treatments
To understand what causes a disease, scientists often create a disease model – a biological system in the lab that mirrors a disease or shows some of the same disease processes.
Such a model could be cells growing in a Petri dish, or organisms that lack a certain cell type, tissue, or organ structure. Studying these cells or organisms under controlled lab conditions removes the randomness of the environmental influences that affect humans. Disease processes can also be studied using computer models or statistical approaches.
EMBL scientists study models for several common human diseases. By letting cells grow into spherical assemblies called organoids, they can study the role of individual genes in processes such as cancer development, or investigate how cancerous cells react to drug treatment. Bioinformaticians develop computer models to simulate the processes by which viruses infect their host cells and multiply within them. Other researchers engineer specialised scaffolds on which they can grow cells into defined layers, similar to tissues found in the body. These cells can be used to study biological processes associated with vascular disease or malaria. All of these systems help us to better understand human diseases and may lead to new approaches for their treatment.
Scientists in the Genome Biology Unit use and develop cutting-edge methods to study how information across different molecular layers (DNA, RNA, Proteins, metabolites) are regulated, processed, and utilised, and how their variation leads to different phenotypes, including disease.
Scientists in this unit use integrated structural and computational techniques to study biology at scales from molecular structures to organismal communities.
At its sites in Hamburg and Grenoble, EMBL provides its researchers and hundreds of external users each year with access to world-leading sources of X-ray and neutron radiation, enabling them to study the structures of biological molecules.
Scientists at EMBL Barcelona use advanced technologies to observe, manipulate, and model how changes in genes percolate through cells, tissues, and organs, in health and disease.
We are looking for a curious, creative, and driven Postdoctoral Researcher to join the research group of Mathieu Boulard at EMBL Rome to study gene regulation in neurons.We investigate how chromatin governs olfactory receptor gene choice, an epigenetic mechanism by which olfactory neurons express a...
Closes on 16th September. Posted 1st September 2026
EditOur Laboratory Animal Resources (LAR) consist of several organizational units providing service to EMBLinvestigators.Working under supervision, you will be involved in the daily care, welfare checks and general husbandry of different mostly aquatic species and their environment. You will perform bas...
Closes on 16th September. Posted 28th August 2026
EditAbout the team We are seeking a Bioinformatician with expertise in data integration and experience in structural biology and molecular dynamics (MD) data to join the Velankar team at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). The Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) team develops essential mac...
Closes on 5th September. Posted 13th August 2026
EditRole Summary / Context About the TeamWe are seeking a skilled bioinformatician who is enthusiastic about developing and maintaining high-quality genome resources for microbial research communities to join the Ensembl Microbes team.As part of the Ensembl project, Ensembl Microbes provides access to b...
Closes on 21st September. Posted 13th August 2026
EditFrom microscopy to mycology, from development to disease modelling, EMBL researchers cover a wide range of topics in the biological sciences.