Weekly Brief, 4 July 2022

This week's highlights

ELIXIR Core Data Resources process plans

The ELIXIR Core Data Resources (CDR) process has now established its intended goals and timelines for it's 2022 and 2023 activities. Please find below a short recorded update from the ELIXIR Hub on the upcoming CDR process plans. Also highlighted within this update is ELIXIR's ongoing operational alignment to that of the Global Biodata Coalition's (GBC) activities to ensure our current and future portfolio of CDR will be under no additional pressure's by participating in both processes.

Recommended reads

The Carniolan Honeybee from Slovenia - A Complete and Annotated Mitochondrial Genome with Comparisons to Closely Related Subspecies

An ELIXIR-SE & ELIXIR-SI paper

The western honeybee, Apis mellifera, is a globally distributed bee species with many recognised subspecies, one of which is Apis mellifera carnica, the Carniolan honeybee. The Carniolan honeybee is native to southern Central Europe and parts of the Balkans, with the locus classicus in Slovenia. It is also widely popular with beekeepers in parts of Central and Northern Europe and other parts of the world, including the USA, Canada, and even New Zealand. In Slovenia, it is protected with measures to conserve the subspecies autochthonous domestic population in place. In this study, the authors sequenced and annotated the mitochondrial genome of a specimen from Slovenia and compared the obtained data with a previously published sample of the A. m. carnica from Austria and the closely related Italian honeybee A. m. ligustica. The acquired position of the sequenced A. m. carnica from Slovenia on the phylogenetic tree brings new evidence for close relationships among C and O lineages and reflects their recent historical matrilinear ancestry.

An EJP RD & EOSC-Life paper

Despite progress in the development of standards for describing and exchanging scientific information, the lack of easy-to-use standards for mapping between different representations of the same or similar objects in different databases poses a major impediment to data integration and interoperability. Mappings often lack the metadata needed to be correctly interpreted and applied. Relationships between the mapped terms are often not documented, which leads to incorrect assumptions and makes them hard to use in scenarios that require a high degree of precision. The lack of descriptions of how mappings were done makes it hard to combine and reconcile mappings, particularly curated and automated ones. In this paper, the authors present the SSSOM standard, describe several use cases in detail and survey some of the existing work on standardizing the exchange of mappings, with the goal of making mappings Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR).

ELIXIR Belgium monthly newsletter released

ELIXIR Belgium has released its June Newsletter, featuring news on events, vacancies and trainings in open science, open data and bioinformatics.

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UKRI awarded new funding

UK Research and Innovation has awarded an initial 6.3 million funding to support the development of BioFAIR.

Read the news

Updates from Communities

Reminder: Call for two co-leads

Deadline: 21 July 2022

The ELIXIR Marine Metagenomics (emerging Microbiome) Community is looking for two co-leads to join Rob Finn to lead this Community. The Community is opening a self-nomination process. Candidates should submit a short statement of their background and what they believe they will bring to the role.

For any questions or nominations, please contact Katharina Heil

More information

Usegalaxy.eu has reached 50,000 registered users

The European Galaxy server, officially launched on 15 March 2018 during the first Galaxy User Conference in Freiburg. It has reached 50,000 registered users this year!

Read more

Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2022) registration opens for online attendance

17-23 July 2022 | Minnesota, USA (hybrid)

The Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2022) Organizing Committee has announced a virtual webinar-like option for those who cant attend the conference in Minnesota, USA.

For more information and registration

Updates from Other Initiatives

July Data Sharing and Reuse Seminar

8 July 2022 | 17:00 CEST

Dr Alan Hutson and Dr Qian Liu will present "NCI Funded Coordinating Center Strategies and Tools for Promoting Data, Software and Model Sharing to the Scientific Community" at the monthly Data Sharing and Reuse Seminar.

Register now

Towards Authenticity: Critical Appraisal of Data Management Plans

19 July 2022 | 17:00 - 20:00 CEST

This workshop will be an introduction to the many considerations of research data management and sharing, specifically around the role of data management plans (DMPs) in grant proposals.

Register now

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

Training course on facilitation and moderation skills

7-8 July 2022 | Hague, Netherlands

ELIXIR Train the Trainer
19-22 July 2022 | Hybrid - Heidelberg, Germany & Online

SIB: Advanced Statistics: Statistical Modelling
22 - 25 August 2022 | Lausanne, Switzerland

SIB: Advanced Programming with R
29-31 August 2022 | Lausanne, Switzerland

SIB: Comparative Genomics
12-14 September 2022 | Lausanne, Switzerland

SIB: Good practice in high-throughput experiments
19-20 September 2022 | Basel, Switzerland

ELIXIR Events and Conference

ELIXIR Innovation and SME Forum: Data driven innovation in healthcare diagnostics
22 September 2022 | 10:00 to 19:00 CEST | Barcelona, Spain

ELIXIR Bioinformatics Industry Forum: Enabling Ecosystems for Machine Learning in the Life Sciences
11 October 2022 | 10:00 to 16:00 CEST | London, UK

BioHackathon Europe

7-11 November 2022 | Paris, France

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

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