This week's highlights
Reminder! Deadline for submitting content for the ELIXIR Annual Report 2021 is next Monday 31 January. Any questions email erin.haskell@elixir-europe.org.
New Platform ExCo opportunities
Application deadline: 28 February 2022
We're seeking two individuals to fill ExCo posts in the Compute and Training Platforms. Steven Newhouse (Compute Platform) and Celia van Gelder (Training Platform) will be standing down this year, and we would like to thank them for their phenomenal work over the past in helping to shape these Platforms.
Find out more
A new handbook for ELIXIR Communities
The handbook outlines the role and purpose of ELIXIR Communities. It shall be considered as a go-to document for Communities, including their responsibilities and benefits, as well as related processes. It contains links to key documents related to ELIXIR Communities.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Communities Coordinator, Katharina Heil, katharina.heil@elixir-europe.org
Read the handbook
We're looking for a new Senior Technical Officer
Deadline 11 February 2022
We're seeking a new team member to join the ELIXIR Technical Team as a Senior technical officer working across the Training and Tools Platforms.
Do you fancy a new challenge or know someone who might? Apply now, or share with your colleagues!
Find out more
Join the next 3D Bioinfo webinar on Protein Engineering
15 February | 14:00 CET Join us and researchers from ELIXIR-UK and ELIXIR-CZ to find out more about tools and resources for protein engineering:
- Web-based tools for computational enzyme design
- Computational ranking of protein designs: comparison with experiment
- Engineering Enzyme Replacement Therapies using Generative Deep Learning
Recommended reads
IDSM ChemWebRDF: SPARQLing small-molecule datasets
An ELIXIR-CZ paper
The Resource Description Framework (RDF), together with well-defined ontologies, significantly increases data interoperability and usability. The SPARQL query language was introduced to retrieve requested RDF data and to explore links between them. Owing to all of these useful features, many biological and chemical databases present their data in RDF, and support SPARQL querying. In our project, we primary focused on PubChem, ChEMBL and ChEBI small-molecule datasets. These datasets are already being exported to RDF by their creators. However, none of them has an official and currently supported SPARQL endpoint. For regular users, we offer a rich web application called ChemWebRDF using the endpoint.
Read more...
Solving unsolved rare neurological diseasesa Solve-RD viewpoint
An RD-Connect and EJP-RD paper
Rare genetic neurological disorders (RND; ORPHA:71859) are a heterogeneous group of disorders comprising >1700 distinct genetic disease entities. However, genetic discoveries have not yet translated into dramatic increases of diagnostic yield and indeed rates of molecular genetic diagnoses have been stuck at about 3050% across NGS modalities and RND phenotypes. To increase the diagnostic yield in RNDs - one of the four focus disease groups in Solve-RD - we follow two major approaches, that we will here present and exemplify: (i) systematic state-of the art re-analysis of large cohorts of unsolved whole-exome/genome sequencing (WES/WGS) RND datasets; and (ii) novel-omics approaches
Updates from Communities
Don't miss these upcoming events from the IDP Community!
The IDP Community have two events coming up that may be of interest. Please join and provide your input and expertise!
Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDP) Community meeting
25 January | 14:30 - 16:30 CET
IDP function and interoperability workshop
26 January | 14:00 - 18:00 CET
Updates from Nodes
New leadership at the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics
Christine Durinx, currently Joint Executive Director, will leave SIB end of March. Following a recruitment process, Christophe Dessimoz has been appointed to take over from 1 April 2022. He will join Ron Appel as Joint Executive Director of SIB and joint Head of the Elixir Swiss Node.
Christophe's group is an internationally recognised scientist based at the University of Lausanne as Associate Professor and SIB Group leader. He is as well an elected member of SIBs Board of Directors since 2018 and holds a professorial position at the University College London since 2020.
Updates from other initiatives
Global Biodata Common publish their selection process for global core data resources
The Global Biodata Coalition has developed a selection process to define Global Core Biodata Resources across biological, life science, and biomedical data resources (biodata resources) worldwide. These recommendations are built on the ELIXIR selection process for Core Data Resources
Read the selection criteria
Submit your resource for consideration as a global Core Data Resources
Webinar: European Biomedical Research Infrastructures resources for Researchers in Neurosciences
1 & 3 February | 11:00 CET | Virtual
The ELIXIR-CONVERGE RDMkit will be presented by Laura Portell and Peter Maccallum at this two day webinar session organised by NEURON (ISCIII partner) in collaboration with EBRA. It will address the different resources that several European Biomedical Research Infrastructures, such as ELIXIR, EBRAINS and INFRAFRONTIER, can offer to the researchers in Neurosciences.
Find out more
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
3D Bioinfo Community Webinar: Protein Engineering
15 February | 14:00 CET
ELIXIR Events and Conferences
Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDP) Community meeting
25 January | 14:30 - 16:30 CET
IDP function and interoperability workshop
26 January | 14:00 - 18:00 CET
ELIXIR-CONVERGE SIB workshop: Research Data Management and Data Management Plan
27-28 January 2022| Lausanne, Switzerland
Emerging Systems Biology Community: white paper writing workshop
8 February | 14:00 - 17:00 CET
Microbial Biotechnology Community meeting
10 February | 14:00 - 17:00 CET
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
Senior Technical Officer - Bioinformatics Tools & Training
Elixir
Postdoc within Bioinformatics
University of Bergen / Earth Biogenome Project Norway