Israel has today become the ninth country to ratify the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement (ECA), joining the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and EMBL. The ECA provides the legal basis for ELIXIR and ratification means that Israel is now a full participating member.
Israel’s decision to ratify the ECA is testament to the country’s long standing involvement in the international bioinformatics community and reflects the national vision to invest in infrastructures that support the goal of improving the life of individuals and society. The Israel ELIXIR Node, which is led by Professor Michal Linial of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Director of the Israel Advanced Studies, brings together the following major institutes: Hebrew Univeristy of Jerusalem, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Weizmann Institute, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, the Technion and Haifa University. The ELIXIR Israel Node will coordinate its training activity with the Israel Centers of Research Excellence.
The focus of Israeli ELIXIR services are linked to applications in medicine, the environment and biotechnology. A particular focus is on the emerging needs of genomics for disease-oriented bioinformatics and services to the biology and medical community and knowledge exchange for next-generation sequencing and proteomics data analysis. Updating and sustaining major proteomics databases and servers such as ProtoNet, ConSurf, and GeneCards will be a priority.