Weekly Brief, 13 December 2021

This week's highlights

ELIXIR-CONVERGE receives second uplift for COVID-19 variant surveillance

The second ELIXIR-CONVERGE amendment has just been signed by the European Commission, backdated to 1 April 2021.

Aitana Lebrand (SIB) and Nils P Willassen (UiT) co-lead the new WP9 to mobilise viral genomes from national sequencing efforts to offer true open data resources for surveilling COVID-19 variants.

Find out more

Celebrating three years of the Data Stewardship Wizard

The Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) celebrates three years since the first version1.0 was released! The origins of the DSW however started way back in 2012. Find out how this data management tool grew from a mind-map & questionnaire into an internationally recognised gold-standard for data stewardship.
Read more

Join us at the 3D-bioinfo webinar tomorrow!

14 December 2021 | 15:00 CET Join the ELIXIR 3D-Bioinfo Community to explore the theme of 'Nucleic Acid Tools: Progress and further plans':

  • Marta Szachniuk, Interlaces and lassos in 3D RNA models'
  • Zhichao Miao, RNA Puzzles on the path to improve
    reliability of RNA structure predictions
  • Ji ern, New tools available to annotate and validate nucleic acids at DNATCO

Find out more and register

Getting started with impact evaluation - second edition workshop

21 January 2022 | 10:00 CET
Given the huge success of our first workshop on impact evaluation we are re-running the event and adapting to to open it up to a larger audience.
Zoom details (not to be shared externally)
Event information

New ESFRI 2021 roadmap published

European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), has published the latest update to its roadmap. ELIXIR remains a landmark ESFRI. Eleven new ESFRIs have been added to the 2021 roadmap including eBrains (neuroscience) and EIRENE (human exposome). ISBE, the ESFRI for systems biology, is no longer included on the roadmap.
Read the report

Recommended reads

Managing the life cycle of a portfolio of open data resources at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

An ELIXIR Switzerland paper

Data resources are essential for the long-term preservation of scientific data and the reproducibility of science. The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics provides the life science community with a portfolio of openly accessible, high-quality databases and software platforms [...]. This review presents the ecosystem of data resources at SIB; the process used for the identification, evaluation and development of resources; and the support activities that SIB provides.
Read more...

Mutational signatures and heterogeneous host response revealed via large-scale characterization of SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity

An ELIXIR Italy paper

To dissect the mechanisms underlying the inflation of variants in the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genome, we present a large-scale analysis of intra-host genomic diversity, which reveals that most samples exhibit heterogeneous genomic architectures, due to the interplay between host-related mutational processes and transmission dynamics.

Read more...

Updates from Platforms

Check out the training highlights from the Australian BioCommons 2021 Showcase


The Australian BioCommons 2021 Showcase presented a wide range of collaborative activities that drew key players together to deliver complex enhancements and new solutions for the digital life sciences. Celia van Gelder highlighted the collaborative efforts of the ELIXIR Training Platform and the Australian Bio in the Outreach, collaboration & skills development session.

Watch the presentation and view the slides

Updates from Nodes

FAIRsharing and the COVID-19 Rapid Review Initiative report

The COVID-19 Rapid Review Initiative have published an analysis on how data and publications were openly shared following a mandate to include data as part of the publishing process (rather than on requesT). The report shows research is freely accessible, but data sharing & preprinting are low. FAIRsharing is participating in the initiative to make results of COVID articles available for scrutiny.
Find out more

Updates from other initiatives

Provide your feedback for the GA4GH Beacon v2.0

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Discovery Work Stream has developed Beacon v2.0, the next version of the Beacon API. Please provide your feedback on their framework and model specifications by 13 January 17:00 UTC.
Provide your comments

Upcoming ELIXIR events & webinars

ELIXIR Training Courses & Webinars

The ELIXIR TeSS portal has a variety of interesting events and courses organised by the ELIXIR Nodes. For more, visit TeSS portal

PerMedCoe Webinar series: Biomedicine, supercomputers and simulations: in silicon experiments and its applications in cancer research

14 December 2021 | 15:00 CET

ELIXIR-CH: Immunoinformatics

25-26 January 2022 | Muttenz, Switzerland

ELIXIR Events and Conferences

3D-Bioinfo Webinar: Nucleic acid tools: progress and further plans

14 December 2021 | 15:00 CET

Getting started with impact evaluation

21 January 2022 | 10:00 CET

ELIXIR-CONVERGE SIB workshop: Research Data Management and Data Management Plan

27-28 January 2022 | Lausanne, Switzerland
ELIXIR All Hands meeting 2022

7-10 June 2022 | Amsterdam, Netherlands

Job vacancies

All vacancies are also published on the ELIXIR website (also including those from industry). If you need our help communicating your new open positions, you can submit a job advertisement and it will automatically appear on our newsletters. Go to our vacancy page to submit a job

Postdoc positions in biocatalysis at DTU Biosustain

DTU Biosustain

Postdoc in Machine Learning for Spatial Multi-omics of Glioblastoma

German Cancer Research Institute (DKFZ)

Postdoc multidimensional integration of high throughput sequencing data

Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt Freiburg

Senior expert at data science excellence center in medical imaging

CMIV/AIDA/NBIS/BIGPICTURE

Postdoctoral fellow (Research Associate)

ELIXIR-Luxembourg / Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine