EMBL Centres

Building up on the breakthroughs of molecular biology, scientists are increasingly considering the complex interactions between the many identified molecules rather than the individual molecules alone. These interactions are inherently non-linear, often include spatial aspects such as dynamically induced relocations and occur on widely varying spatial and temporal scales.

The investigation of such systems is inherently difficult. In the last decade, the realisation of these challenges has lead to the increased adoption of mathematical modelling techniques originally developed in physics and engineering into biological research. As a rather novel development, these methods have not yet found wide consideration in undergraduate teachings.

The general aim of the Centre for Biological Modelling is to assist researchers at EMBL in the adoption of modelling into their research workflows. To this end, it provides weekly consultation appointments, performs collaborative modelling tasks, trains EMBL members in relevant programming languages and software tools and will foster collaboration and interactions between EMBL researchers using seminars, journal clubs as well as interdisciplinary retreats. The expertise of the centre resides in first principles modelling using Ordinary, Partial and Stochastic Differential Equations, Constraint-Based Modelling such as Flux Balance Analysis as well as Boolean and Fuzzy Logic Modelling approaches.

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The Centre for Statistical Data Analysis (CSDA) helps EMBL scientists to use adequate statistical methods for their specific technological or biological research questions.

Advice is given on statistical methods such as testing, regression, clustering, classification, error rates/bars, resampling, quality Control/outlier detection, visualization, and programming (R).

It offers courses on general statistical data analysis and on statistical programming using R and Bioconductor. Additionally, a consulting service has been established and is open to all scientists working at EMBL.

In particular, the CSDA provides assistance on statistical applications that are broadly related to the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data (RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq, 4C/HiC, DNA- Seq). Furthermore, its focus is on needs of smaller and more experimentally oriented groups, e.g. groups whose primary experience is not in high-throughput data analysis.

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The mission of the centre (CBNA) is to disseminate expertise, know-how and guidance in the field of biological network integration and analysis throughout EMBL to computational biologists and experimentalists alike. For expert users, bioinformaticians spread across EMBL Research Units, it serves as a platform to share resources, exchange expertise, and learn about advances and new approaches in the computational analysis of networks. At the same time offering support to experimentalists with less computational expertise, who wish to pursue large-scale biology or to place small-scale mechanistic experiments in the context of existing networks.

Scientific support is focused on the systematic reconstruction and analysis of networks from a functional and topological perspective through the application of graph-theoretic approaches. Exploration of the structural behaviour of networks, characterisation of molecular functions, and differential analysis in the context of integrated experimental data on a global scale provide effective means for analysing complex systems with great potential for biomedical applications.

As an EMBL-wide platform with the aim to work for you and with you, we offer collaboration, consulting on research projects, and organization of seminars and courses.

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Chemistry has never been more important for biological research than today. The continual development of new reagents, probes and inhibitor technologies are enabling increasingly precise and fine grained understanding of macromolecular function in the cell.

The EMBL Centre for Chemical Biology promotes and supports researchers using chemical approaches across all the EMBL sites. The Centre organises a regular Chemical Biology retreat bringing together EMBL researchers seeking to create even better molecular tools for helping to understand biology. It also organises biannually one of the largest Chemical Biology conferences worldwide.