Guest author(s)

Fuelling discovery together: 2024 user survey learnings

Blog post by Eleni Tzampatzopoulou, EMBL-EBI Impact Manager In summer 2024, EMBL-EBI ran a user survey, inviting our community to let us know how they use the open data resources we jointly manage with our collaborators. With over 2,300 responses from 126 countries, we were delighted by the depth…

Speaking the language of DNA

Science & Technology Right from the early days of DNA sequencing, EMBL’s scientists have been instrumental in helping the world understand, decode, archive, and manipulate genomes at scale and across many branches of the evolutionary tree, a task they continue to excel at today.

EMBL Agri-Tech Partnership to deliver safe food and environmental health

Connections The partnership will address global food security challenges through optimised agricultural research and data-driven innovation.

EMBL Science Day with Evonik: fostering collaborative innovations

Connections EMBL hosted a Science Day with Evonik, bringing together 16 industry experts and EMBL scientists to explore collaborative research opportunities.

12 moments of philanthropy: #11 EMBL’s World of Molecular Biology

Connections In 2023, EMBL opened its interactive World of Molecular Biology exhibition as an inspiring entree into molecular biology. This visionary project would not have been possible without an impressive array of support.

Complex Portal expands Human Complexome with ML-predicted human protein complexes

The Complex Portal – an encyclopaedic resource of macromolecular complexes from key model organisms – has expanded its coverage of the Human Complexome. This includes: To find out more, read the new paper entitled Complex Portal 2025: Predicted human complexes and enhanced visualisation tools…

Sparking a data revolution

Science & Technology The introduction of computational methods in biology opened up an entirely new world of insights and breakthroughs. Over the last several decades, EMBL has been at the forefront of discoveries and innovations that have not only propelled the field forward but also opened up access to bioinformatics…

New online career-planning resources for life science researchers

EMBL Announcements EMBL Fellows’ Career Service launches new online resources for early- career researchers at EMBL and beyond, aimed at providing comprehensive career guidance.

EMBL ARISE2 programme receives EC funding

EMBL Announcements The programme will advance excellence in research infrastructure management and technology development.

Making sense of RNA: five key insights from a recent EMBO | EMBL Symposium

Science & Technology A recent symposium on ‘The complex life of RNA’ brought together scientists from across the world interested in exploring one of the most crucial molecules essential to life.

Progress report on sustainability

Lab Matters EMBL’s Head of Sustainability shares the steps the organisation has taken to make its research more sustainable.

Picky proteins: understanding yeast adaptor protein selectivity

Science & Technology Scientists from EMBL Hamburg and CSSB have revealed key insights into the cellular process of clathrin-mediated endocytosis.

The EMBL Course and Conference Programme: a legacy of excellence

Lab Matters As we mark EMBL’s 50th anniversary, we celebrate not only the groundbreaking research and discoveries that have emerged from this prestigious institution but also the rich history and profound impact of the EMBL Course and Conference Programme.

12 moments of philanthropy: #10 EMBL-Stanford Life Science Alliance

Connections Dieter Schwarz Foundation provides the ‘life’ support for innovative global research collaboration of EMBL-Stanford Life Science Alliance

Empowering research infrastructure scientists

Connections The ARISE summer school brought together fellows from across EMBL sites who are working on technology projects as part of EMBL’s Career Accelerator for Research Infrastructure Scientists (ARISE) programme.

DECIPHER v11.28 Released

The v11.28 DECIPHER release is out now. Find out about the new features and improvements.

BioChemGraph: Unifying structural and bioactivity data to accelerate drug discovery

In the era of data-driven biology, integrating information from different resources is essential yet often challenging. The BioChemGraph project addresses this challenge by creating infrastructure that consolidates structural, functional, and biochemical annotations for small molecules and their…

InterPro 102.0 released

InterPro version 102.0 and InterProScan 5.70-102.0 are now available. 

Seeing is understanding

Science & Technology Imaging lets us observe biology in action – it makes visible the hidden processes of life. From its founding, EMBL has been a centre of breakthroughs and developments in bioimaging, and it continues to play a pioneering role in this field today.

Inspiring young minds by breaking language barriers

Lab Matters A hands-on workshop offered an excellent opportunity for scientists to connect with children with whom they share a common language.

“Structurally” sound

Science & Technology The function of biological molecules is intimately linked to their structure. In the 50 years since EMBL was established, its researchers and engineers have constantly provided leadership in structural biology research and services, resulting in many scientific breakthroughs and novel insights.

New MGnify Proteins web resources launched

EMBL-EBI’s microbiome data resource MGnify produces a valuable trove of protein sequence data through its ongoing analysis of microbiome derived data. Two new MGnify Proteins web resources make this dataset easily accessible and searchable, both for large queries across the entire database…

12 Moments of Philanthropy: #9 TREC research expedition

Connections The Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation helped fund EMBL’s Advanced Mobile Lab, enabling many experimental concepts.

Fostering Nordic collaborations in molecular medicine

Connections The 13th annual meeting of the Nordic EMBL partnership for molecular medicine took place on 16–19 September 2024 in Oslo and was hosted by the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM).

Training for the future

Lab Matters Starting in the 1980s, EMBL’s PhD programme has played a notable role in helping train some of the brightest scientific minds in Europe, as well as in building a thriving research community focused on collaboration and innovation.

AlphaFold database empowers researchers with enhanced structural search via Foldseek integration

Traditional sequence search methods are fast and efficient but rely solely on comparing amino acid sequences. This approach can miss crucial insights because proteins with similar functions can have vastly different sequences. Although their sequences have diverged, these proteins often retain 3D…

Hans Clevers to deliver 2024 Kafatos Lecture on pioneering organoid research

EMBL Announcements On Friday 4 October 2024 at 18:00 CEST, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam will host the 2024 Kafatos Lecture, delivered by renowned scientist Hans Clevers.

12 moments of philanthropy: #8 Suzanne Eaton Playground

Connections After Suzanne Eaton’s death, family and friends raised funds for a Kinderhaus playground, providing a joyous way to remember her.

Developing a simple, cost-effective method to study an important protein modification

Science & Technology EMBL Grenoble researchers have come up with a new way to identify the targets of a crucial protein-modifying enzyme involved in diverse cellular processes.

DECIPHER v11.27 release

The v11.27 DECIPHER release is out now. Find out about the new features and improvements.

Run, Scientist, Run: engaging with science through play

Lab Matters A life-size game inspired by the Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) expedition provides the public with an inside view of the world of coastal ecology research.

12 moments of philanthropy: #6 ‘Summer in Science’

Connections At EMBL Rome, an immersive youth training programme is dedicated to, but also inspired by, alumnus Riccardo Cortese, thanks to private donors.

Exploring microbial life in context

Science & Technology EMBL researchers and their partners have been studying microbial functions and interactions for the benefit of human and planetary health for the last two decades.

Inaugural ‘From Lab to Launch’ event ignites entrepreneurial spirit among scientists

Connections This event bridged research and entrepreneurship, fuelling innovation and discovery. Attendees immersed themselves in insightful discussions and invaluable networking opportunities, inspired to journey from lab research to entrepreneurial success.

An enzyme with a smart friend

Science & Technology EMBL Grenoble’s Kowalinski Group analysed the structure of an enzyme responsible for modifying tRNA molecules to fine-tune protein production. They discovered that to distinguish almost identical, yet different, tRNA molecules, the enzyme uses help from another enzyme – a type of cooperation…

Looking back: EMBL in the 1970s and 1980s

Lab Matters A special Coffee with EMBL session celebrated EMBL’s 50th anniversary by inviting alumni to reflect on the organisation’s first two decades.

Structure and function of new lysosome transporter revealed

Science & Technology The group of Christian Löw at EMBL Hamburg and CSSB, and collaborators from the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel and CNRS & Université Paris Cité worked together to reveal the structure and function of a previously unknown lysosome transporter, MFSD1.

The EMBL-EBI File Replication Archive hits 100 petabytes

A behind-the-scenes look at EMBL-EBI's in-house archive that supports major open data resources and ingests record amounts of data

12 moments of philanthropy: #5 Friends of EMBL

Connections Starting in 2014, Friends of EMBL engages a diverse range of individuals to support and connect with EMBL research. Through unique events and philanthropic contributions, members play a vital role in fostering a stronger bond between EMBL and society.

Genetic mosaicism more common than thought

Science & Technology Blood stem cells from healthy people carry major chromosomal alterations, a study in Nature Genetics by researchers at the Max Delbrück Center and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) finds. The discovery suggests that we are all genetic mosaics, which may contribute to ageing-related…

DECIPHER v11.26 release

The latest DECIPHER release includes AlphaMissense scores, links to the Open Targets Platform and more.

Expression Atlas 40 released

The latest Expression Atlas 40 release is now live, containing new RNA-seq datasets, including a featured experiment resulting from a collaboration with Genotype Tissue Expression (GTEx) project as well as new proteomics data derived from our collaboration with PRIDE. In total, this release…

Ensembl 112 has been released

Ensembl 112 and the corresponding release of Ensembl Genomes 59 has released. This includes exciting new fish species, many more drosophila species and new VEP updates.

12 moments of philanthropy: #4 EMBL Imaging Centre

Connections A bold vision to build a centre of excellence for imaging captured the imagination and support from private and public donors to help create the EMBL Imaging Centre.

Researchers aim to use quantum computing to assemble and analyse pangenomes 

Science & Technology Experts in quantum computing and genomics to develop new methods and algorithms to process biological data.

Sparking curiosity: the Curiosity microscope

Lab Matters BIOcean5D is an EMBL-coordinated project co-funded by the European Union that unites 31 institutes to address pressing global challenges on marine biodiversity.

Collaborative project launched across EMBL member states invites teenagers to discover the wonder of proteins

EMBL Announcements New project will help inform and educate young people about the important roles proteins play in nature, health, and disease, as part of EMBL’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

When AI meets biology

Science & Technology A recent EMBO | EMBL conference provided a forum for researchers to share how AI is making a difference in biology and bioinformatics.

DECIPHER v11.25 released

The latest DECIPHER update, version 11.25, introduces new key features including the integration of functional data from multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVEs) and much more.

Using Data Hubs to analyse SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogen sequences

The SARS-CoV-2 Data Hubs are a set of tools coupled with infrastructure that support four components: the submission, analysis, presentation and visualisation of SARS-CoV-2 raw read data, and its resulting analyses. What makes Data Hubs attractive is a unique set of features: A new publication in…

12 moments of philanthropy: #3 Environmental Research Initiative

ConnectionsLab Matters The Environmental Research Initiative is a community effort of donations empowering EMBL scientists to solve global environmental challenges through molecular biology.

Gaining skills and building connections in infection biology

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives The first EMBL-UNESCO infection biology research fellows share observations after residencies with EMBL researchers.

MGnify Genomes mouse gut catalogue v1.0 released

The MGnify data resource for microbiome data has launched the latest MGnify Genomes catalogue comprising 112,951 genomes derived from mouse gut datasets, represented by 2,847 species-level cluster representative genomes. This catalogue was generated as part of our work with the MRC funded…

Studying the relationship between cancer-promoting proteins

Science & Technology A new study from the Bhogaraju Group at EMBL Grenoble reveals how the cancer-promoting MAGE family of proteins bind to their targets, aiding the development of anti-cancer drugs that target these proteins.

First datasets available in the Federated EGA Network

The Federated European Genome-phenome Archive (FEGA) marks a significant milestone with the release of its first datasets.

2024 EMBL Alumni Award recipients announced

EMBL Announcements Two former EMBL scientists have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to research and leadership capabilities in the fields of evolutionary cell biology and molecular medicine.

DECIPHER v11.24 Released

Version 11.24 of DECIPHER introduces a new ACMG/AMP pathogenicity interface for sequence variant predictions, displays ClinGen Variant Curation Expert Panel recommendations on gene pages, and updates ACMG secondary finding information to v3.2.

12 moments of philanthropy: #2 The Fuchs Fund and its unique approach to supporting EMBL PhD students

ConnectionsLab Matters The Fuchs Fund, started by Lilo and Manfred Fuchs in 2017, has become a lifeline for EMBL students facing adversity during their PhD journeys.

Europe PMC supports preprint peer review

New Europe PMC tools support preprint review discovery

InterPro 98.0 released

InterPro version 98.0 and InterProScan 5.66-98.0 are now available. InterPro now features hundreds of new methods integrated from partner databases, and InterProScan draws on over 40000 entries. InterPro version 98.0 New features include: InterPro 98.0 covers 81.7% of UniProt Knowledgebase release…

12 moments of philanthropy: #1 Klaus Tschira and the ATC

ConnectionsLab Matters A pivotal conversation 20 years ago led to the creation of the iconic 'double-helix building' that is EMBL's Advanced Training Centre.

Six takeaways from the EMBL conference Cancer Genomics 2023

Science & Technology Approximately 300 scientists met up at EMBL Heidelberg to unravel the centuries-old puzzle of cancer through the modern lens of genomics.

RNA to rule them all

Science & Technology The Kosinski Group at EMBL Hamburg collaborated with other groups in Hamburg to reveal critical steps in Lassa virus ribonucleoparticle assembly and recruitment, and the crucial role played by RNA in in the Lassa virus life cycle.

Navigating success: an EMBL alumni mentorship story

Lab Matters A recent success story of the Alumni Mentorship Programme is that of Luis Pedro Coelho, a Portuguese former postdoctoral fellow in the Bork Group, and his mentor Frank Gannon, former EMBO Director and EMBL Group Leader and Senior Scientist.

Exploring the universe: Roel Wijnaendts

People & Perspectives EMBL alumnus Roel Wijnaendts looks back at a long career in academic research and entrepreneurship that has left an indelible mark in the fields of instrumentation and optics.

Extending the network of infectious disease data portals: developments in Sweden and The Netherlands

Two new data portals are set to support infectious disease monitoring and research across Europe; the Swedish Pathogens Data Portal and the Netherlands COVID-19 Data Portal.

Advocating for a generalist approach to science and life

EMBLetc Sara Fahs, who did her PhD from EMBL Heidelberg and is one of the newest members of the EMBL alumni association board, writes about key insights from her journey in science and her work on medicinal chemistry, during a career spanning academia and industry.

Remembering the moment EMBL was established

EMBLetc The EMBL agreement, which made reality the idea of creating a European laboratory for life sciences, was signed in 1973 and ratified in 1974. Fifty years later, we look back at this historic moment.

Five takeaways from ‘Seeing is believing’ in 2023

Science & Technology A recent EMBO | EMBL symposium brought together leading developers of imaging methods with cutting-edge applications that illustrate how imaging can answer biological questions.

InterPro 97.0 released

InterPro version 97.0 and InterProScan 5.64-97.0 are now available. InterPro now features hundreds of new methods integrated from partner databases, and InterProScan draws on over 40000 entries.

Inspiring the next generation of Montenegrin scientists

Connections EMBL participated in the recent Science and Innovation Days in Podgorica, Montenegro, sharing its passion for knowledge and curiosity.

A leap in user experience: AlphaFold Database introduces sequence-based search and structure cluster members

In response to user community demands, the AlphaFold Protein Structure database has introduced sequence-based search and cluster members.

Six symposium takeaways about human microbiome research

Science & Technology Here are six takeaways from a recent EMBO/EMBL symposium that brought together scientists to discuss the state of research involving the human microbiome and its connection to health and disease.

Spotlight: Seeing into the seas

Science & Technology A new method developed by EMBL scientists can help us identify and investigate plankton species in field samples with greater speed, accuracy, and resolution than ever possible before.

InterPro 96.0 released

InterPro version 96.0 and InterProScan 5.64-96.0 are now available.

Forging collaborations across the Nordics

ConnectionsLab Matters The 12th annual meeting of the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine took place in Espoo, Finland, between 11-14 September 2023.

Global guidelines to improve the quality of microscopy images in scientific publications

Science & Technology A working group of researchers from the QUAREP-LiMi initiative has developed global guidelines to improve the quality of microscopy data and images published in scientific publications.

Exploring Nexus Island

Lab Matters Learn more about the game-based workshop that lets participants experience what it feels like to be a researcher on the TREC expedition.

EMBL leadership comments on the UK’s association to Horizon Europe

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters EMBL Director General and Deputy Director General respond to the announcement by the European Commission and UK Government

Spotlight: Off to the pole

Science & Technology For a fruit fly embryo to develop correctly, key factors need to get to the right place at the right time – a journey that starts in the developing egg, as seen in this image from the Ephrussi Group at EMBL Heidelberg

Ensembl 110 has been released

Ensembl 100 release brings exciting updates, such as the addition of regulation data to 5 animal genomes studied extensively in agriculture.

Merging science and theatre

EMBLetc Veli Vural Uslu, winner of the 2023 John Kendrew award, chats about his journey in science and his adventures in science communication. Uslu is the writer, director, and organiser of various science-themed theatre plays, and the founder of TAP (The Awesome Potatoes) Science Theater Heidelberg.

Celebration of the next ten years of the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine

ConnectionsLab Matters The Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine celebrates the signing of its renewed ten years agreement between EMBL and the Universities of Aarhus, Oslo, Umeå, and Helsinki.

EMBL celebrates 43 new PhDs

Lab Matters On Friday 21 April 2023, EMBL held a graduation ceremony to celebrate its newest group of PhDs who graduated during the last 12 months. The graduating class comprised 43 fellows representing 17 nationalities and all six EMBL sites.

EMBL Alumni Awards Announced for 2023

Two former EMBL scientists have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to the fields of science communication and multiple sequence alignment research, respectively.

Tracing the history of women in science at EMBL

Lab Matters On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2023, EMBL archivist Maria Papanikolaou discusses the traces left by the women in science who have passed through EMBL, irrevocably changing the organisation in small and big ways.

New releases: InterPro 93.0 and InterProScan 5.61-93.0

InterPro now features hundreds of new methods integrated from partner databases, and InterProScan draws on over 38,000 entries. InterPro version 93.0 InterPro 93.0 integrates 300 new methods from the CDD (261), PANTHER (12), PROSITE profiles (17), SMART (9), TIGRFAMs (1) databases, and covers 81.7%…

Shedding light on rare diseases: open data and model organisms

Why open data from model organisms is essential for rare disease research.

Six enlightening questions about ‘plasticity across scales’

Science & Technology A recent EMBO|EMBL symposium provided a forum for discussing recent research on a range of issues for organisms as they cope with changing environments.

From academia to industry and back

EMBLetc Sara A. Courtneidge, recipient of the 2022 Lennart Philipson Award, reflects on the fundamental and translational research aspects of her career in cancer research

Setting priorities for preprints and open science

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Newly appointed member of the ASAPbio Board of Directors, EMBL Group Leader Gautam Dey speaks about preprints, data management, and open science.

Compare experimental and predicted structures with PDBe-KB

You can now superpose AlphaFold models onto PDB structures at the touch of a button using the PDBe-KB aggregated views of proteins.

Ensembl 108 has been released

We are pleased to announce the release of Ensembl 108, and the corresponding release of Ensembl Genomes 55 featuring changes in the human default tracks, new genomes in Ensembl Plants and Ensembl Metazoa, and the addition of mitochondrial annotation for Tasmanian devil. Genome assemblies and…

New releases: InterPro 91.0 and InterProScan 5.59-91.0

We are pleased to announce the release of InterPro 91.0 and InterProScan 5.59-91.0

Inaugural Kafatos Lecture brings outstanding science to the global public

EMBL´s Inaugural Kafatos Lecture brings outstanding science to the global public. The 2022 lecture will be delivered by EMBL alumnus and distinguished developmental geneticist Denis Duboule and will focus on ‘Evolution and Embryonic Development: The Complex Story of our Dual Origins’.

2022 EMBL Alumni Awards Winners announced

EMBL Announcements Two former EMBL staff members have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to research in the fields of brain evolution and cancer.

“If you want science to move forward, you have to share it”

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives EMBO Director Fiona Watt discusses preprints, data sharing, and evaluation in light of EMBL’s new Open Science policy

An international study proposes stool analysis for early detection of pancreatic cancer

Science & Technology A molecular signature of 27 microorganisms in stool defines the high-risk population for the most common pancreatic cancer and could be used for early detection of the disease.

Genomic data for biodiversity – a global challenge

Science & Technology An exploration of where in the world genomics methods are applied and where the data are used.

Solving molecular puzzles to find the perfect fit

Science & Technology Using cryo-EM and structural biology techniques, EMBL researchers have shown how two proteins of Legionella pneumophila interact. This finding sheds light on a mechanism critical to the infection process and could lead to the development of new drugs to treat pneumonia.

Denis Duboule to deliver inaugural Kafatos Lecture

EMBL Announcements EMBL alumnus Denis Duboule has been selected as the speaker for the inaugural Kafatos Lecture to take place in October 2022.

Addressing the biodiversity crisis with 12,000 reptiles – or one database

Science & Technology An alumnus reflects on the reptile database he started in 1996 while at EMBL. The database helps understand biodiversity issues.

Newly-launched Kafatos Lectures to bring groundbreaking science to the public

EMBL Announcements A new life sciences lecture series commemorates the legacy of former EMBL Director General Fotis Kafatos for people around the world.

EMBL alum takes DNA sequencing to the field

Science & Technology EMBL alum Lara Urban has developed mobile DNA approaches to monitor impacts upon biodiversity in remote areas of New Zealand and elsewhere.

Common medications accumulate in gut bacteria

Science & Technology A new collaborative study led by EMBL group leaders Kiran Patil, Nassos Typas, and Peer Bork has found that common medications accumulate in human gut bacteria. This process reduces drug effectiveness and affects the metabolism of common gut microbes, thereby altering the gut microbiome.

Supporting EMBL and fundamental research

People & Perspectives EMBL alumnus Angus Lamond reflects on the process of translating the importance of fundamental research – to EMBL and wider society.

All heart

Science & Technology A community of scientists is looking at the estimated three billion heart muscle cells in a human heart to better understand heart disease.

Accessible 3D protein models to accelerate scientific discovery

Science & Technology DeepMind and EMBL-EBI to make millions of protein structure predictions freely available to the scientific community.

Great expectations – the potential impacts of AlphaFold DB

Science & Technology A discussion of the applications that AlphaFold DB may enable and the possible impact of the resource on science and society.

EMBL Alumni Awards 2021

People & Perspectives EMBL alumni Ilaria Piazza and Ken Holmes have been recognised for their outstanding contributions, and will receive their awards as part of the celebrations for EMBL World Alumni Day.

How our gut microbiome changes over time

Science & Technology Researchers investigate how external factors can influence the persistence of microbe species in the human gut

The power of community

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives EMBL Director Matthias Hentze describes the Environmental Research Initiative: a community effort to solve global environmental challenges.

Team Science: building diversity and inclusion in research

Lab Matters In a talk on 29 April, Professor Jeanette Woolard will share her experience of creating a more positive research culture

EMBL prepares women postdocs for leadership

Lab Matters Members of EMBL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee explain how EMBL is choosing to challenge through its LEAP mentoring programme.

Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal causes of disease

Science & Technology Scientists in the Stegle group and colleagues have studied induced pluripotent stem cells from around 1,000 donors to identify correlations between individual genetic variants and altered gene expression. They linked more than 4,000 of the genetic variants responsible for altered expression…

New avenues for eradicating cancer

Science & Technology A new method has the potential to boost international research efforts to find drugs that eradicate cancer at its source.

Bridging Excellence: a unique transatlantic opportunity for postdocs

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Applications are now open for the Life Science Alliance’s Bridging Excellence Fellowships, enabling postdocs to carry out collaborative projects at EMBL and Stanford University.

A new piece of the HIV infection puzzle explored

Science & Technology Researchers from EMBL and Heidelberg University Hospital combine high-resolution imaging to observe the infection process in cell nuclei, opening the door for new therapeutics.

Opinion: Allyship and Women in Science

Lab Matters Roshni Mooneeram discusses what Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is to her, and what the meaning of allyship is.

Opinion: Scientific disagreements aren’t new to COVID

People & Perspectives Understanding why disagreement is good for COVID science. EMBL Deputy Director General Ewan Birney offers tips for sorting through the discourse.

Solving the protein structure puzzle

Science & Technology How artificial intelligence can help us solve the mysteries of the protein universe

Statement on recent paper on mentorships in academia

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters EMBL’s Eileen Furlong, Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee and Head of the Genome Biology Unit, responds to the recent Nature Comms paper on the potential effects of mentor–mentee relationships.

Response to the proposed compromise on the EC’s Multiannual Financial Framework

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives EMBL Director General Edith Heard and EMBO Director Maria Leptin respond to the current proposal on the Multiannual Financial Framework.

Response to the resignation of ERC President Mauro Ferrari

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters EMBL Director General Edith Heard responds to the resignation of the President of the European Research Council (ERC)

Tissue dynamics provide clues to human disease

Science & Technology EMBL scientists examine the molecular causes of a rare hereditary disease of the spine and ribs

EMBL’s response to the coronavirus outbreak

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters EMBL is committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment for our staff and visitors.

Bridging Excellence Fellowships

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters The call for applications for Bridging Excellence Fellowships is now open

Building Euro-BioImaging

Lab Matters EMBL’s Jan Ellenberg reflects on the process of forming a European research infrastructure

Microbiomes take the stage at New Scientist Live

People & Perspectives On microbiomes, public engagement and not being boring

Integrating imaging research across Europe

ConnectionsLab Matters Euro-BioImaging now established as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium

Fallingwater filled with mice

People & Perspectives Nadia Rosenthal describes how she built EMBL Rome’s mouse house

Discover the research schooner Tara and her new microplastics mission in the Barcelona harbour on 4 October

EMBL Announcements When: Friday, 4 October at 16:30 – 18:00. Where: The press conference will be held on the Tara schooner at the Port Olímpic in Barcelona. What: A press conference on the new Tara mission on microplastics and Tara’s cooperation with EMBL.…

Happy hour for time-resolved crystallography

Science & Technology Researchers from Hamburg simplify time-resolved X-ray crystallography

Discover the research schooner Tara and her new microplastics mission in the Old Port of Marseille on 27 September

EMBL Announcements What: A press conference on the new Tara mission on microplastics and the Tara Ocean Foundation’s cooperation with EMBL. The press briefing will be followed by a visit to the schooner.When: Friday 27 September at 13:00 CEST.Where: The press conference will be held on the Tara…

Discover the research schooner Tara and her new microplastics mission in the Rome harbour on 13 September

EMBL Announcements When: Friday 13 September at 14:30.Where: The press conference will be held on the Tara schooner at the Porto Turistico di Roma (Lungomare Duca degli Abruzzi, 84, 00121 Roma RM, Italy).What: A press conference on the new Tara mission on microplastics and the Tara Ocean Foundation’s…

Obituary: Bernd-Uwe Jahn

EMBL Announcements Bernd-Uwe Jahn, former EMBL Administrative Director, Ministerialrat and Jurist has passed away

In remembrance of Suzanne Eaton

EMBL Announcements The life science community is deeply saddened by the death of Suzanne Eaton

Bio-Rad joins EMBL’s Corporate Partnership Programme

ConnectionsLab Matters Joining forces to support early-career scientists

Life with the endangered kākāpō

Science & Technology Using genomics to help endangered species

James Sharpe elected EMBO Member

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives The head of EMBL’s Barcelona site joins a prestigious group of more than 1800 scientists worldwide

Discover the research schooner Tara and her new microplastics mission in the Hamburg harbour on 17 June

EMBL Announcements When: Monday 17 June at 10:30Where: The press conference will be held on the Tara schooner at the Sandtorhafen in the Hamburg harbourWhat: A press conference on the new Tara mission on microplastics and Tara’s cooperation with EMBL. A tour of the schooner will be organised with the…

The Arctic Ocean: reservoir of marine viruses

Science & Technology Results from the Tara Oceans expedition reveal the Arctic Ocean as a cradle of viral biodiversity

Catalogue of structural variants

Science & Technology Thorough characterisation of structural variants in human genomes

Partners in the north

Lab Matters The Nordic EMBL Partnership directors discuss the value of collaborating across borders

The Crick and EMBL join forces

Lab Matters The Francis Crick Institute and EMBL have agreed to work together to strengthen European science

How EMBL partnerships promote collaboration

Lab Matters EMBL’s Plamena Markova reflects on the EMBL Partnership Programme

Witamy, Polsko!

ConnectionsLab Matters On 5 February 2019, EMBL welcomed Poland as its 26th member state

Structure of prodrug-transporter complex revealed

Science & Technology Scientists develop structural model that could help in the development of drugs with increased absorption rates

Miltenyi Biotec becomes new corporate partner

ConnectionsLab Matters Joining forces to advance training in biomedical research and therapy

Design thinking

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives EMBL’s Design Team Lead on translating scientific discoveries into visual designs

Model to predict prostate cancer progress

Science & Technology Cancer researchers have developed a computer model to predict the course of disease for prostate cancer

New ways to look at protein-RNA networks

Science & Technology Researchers develop new method to analyse the entire protein-RNA network of the cell

Science in industry

Lab Matters EMBL postdocs discover industry-led research opportunities at the Corporate Summer School

Molecular and behavioural effects of SETD5 mutation

Science & Technology Scientists uncover effects of mutation that can cause autism and intellectual disability

New insights into the regulation of haemostasis

Science & Technology EMBL scientists investigate the structure of a key protein involved in blood clotting

Time-resolved X-ray crystallography simplified

Science & Technology Speeding up time-resolved X-ray crystallography with EMBL beamline P14

Promega joins EMBL’s Corporate Partnership Programme

ConnectionsLab Matters EMBL and Promega collaborate to train young scientists

Solving the structure of retromer

Science & Technology Retromer’s 3D structure improves understanding of cellular sorting and packaging

€17 million fund to power European detection and imaging innovation pipeline

ConnectionsLab Matters ATTRACT initiative will fund 170 breakthrough detection and imaging ideas with market potential

Powering up

People & Perspectives Alumni share how joining EMBL’s IT team was a career upgrade

EMBL in six objects

Lab Matters A history of EMBL in six objects from the EMBL Archive

The scientific origins of Edith Heard

People & Perspectives EMBL’s next Director General reflects on the questions that drive her research

Melina Schuh receives EMBO Gold Medal

People & Perspectives EMBL alumna Melina Schuh recognised for excellence in science

Obituary: Elisa Izaurralde

People & Perspectives Elisa Izaurralde, EMBL alumna, has passed away

The rise of GPU computing in science

Science & Technology Discover how EMBL scientists are using GPU computing to push biology forward

International science: Sanja Damjanović

ConnectionsLab Matters Montenegro’s Minister of Science discusses the importance of international collaboration in research

LifeTime – a visionary proposal for an EU Flagship

ConnectionsLab Matters Following the completion of the Human Genome Project  in 2001, scientists and the media described the genome as “the book of life”, holding the answers to the way genes are linked to disease. Yet, seventeen years later, we are still deciphering how cells interpret this book. Since…

A chance to make scientists’ voices heard

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Maria Leptin reflects on how to create a research environment that serves the needs of the community

ERC Scientific Council meets in Heidelberg

Connections EMBL and EMBO hosted the ERC's Scientific Council in Heidelberg 28 February to 2 March

Origins at EMBL

Science & Technology Join us in our new editorial theme as we ask how everything began

Women in Science Day: school event

Lab Matters EMBL Barcelona organises first school activity to coincide with the International Day of Women in Science

On the orchids of Darwin

Science & Technology How Darwin’s work revealed the intimate relationship between orchids and insects

A physical revolution

People & Perspectives EMBL physicist-turned-biologist alumni win 2017 Kendrew and Phillipson awards

Hands-on science inspires Hamburg

Lab Matters 20,000 visitors get sneak peek at giant particle accelerators at DESY DAY in Hamburg

Obituary: Fotis Kafatos

People & Perspectives Former EMBL Director General Fotis Kafatos passes away

#EMBLcurious

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Six curious questions and the EMBL community's answers. Check back each week for the next question

A curious case of serendipity

People & Perspectives Jacques Dubochet, Nobel laureate and former EMBL group leader, reflects on a key aha moment

What is EMBL curious about?

Science & Technology Find out how curiosity is driving some of the work we do here at EMBL

EMBL and Australia – delivering excellence

ConnectionsLab Matters How Australia’s associate membership of EMBL empowers scientists and drives collaboration

New Speaker announced for Nordic EMBL Partnership

ConnectionsLab Matters Bernt Eric Uhlin, Director of MIMS, will replace Kjetil Taskén, Director of NCMM

Bridging excellence: EMBL and Stanford’s Alliance

Connections Lars Steinmetz. Director of the Life Science Alliance, reflects on the EMBL|Stanford initiative

Opinion: Archives for Science

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Biologists Sydney Brenner and Richard J. Roberts addressed the importance of scientific archives

Senses: Fathoming fear

Science & Technology EMBL’s Cornelius Gross wants to understand fear responses and the brain circuitry that governs them

Senses: Silencing noise

Science & Technology Two EMBL researchers are exploring new ways to filter out noise and get to the data they need

Senses: What you see is how you feel

Science & Technology EMBL’s Hiroki Asari investigates how our internal state can change the way our eyes work

Obituary: Riccardo Cortese

People & Perspectives The life science community is deeply saddened by the loss of EMBL alumnus Riccardo Cortese

Obituary: Konrad Müller

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives EMBL alumnus Konrad Müller has sadly passed away

Behind the scenes: Building EMBL’s Barcelona site

Lab Matters Silke Schumacher explains how the new EMBL site in Barcelona came into being

Obituary: Anna Tramontano

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Anna Tramontano, bioinformatics pioneer and EMBL alumna, has passed away

A tribute to Anna Tramontano

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Janet Thornton reflects on the contributions of EMBL alumna Anna Tramontano

In remembrance of Anna Tramontano

People & Perspectives The research community mourns the passing of Anna Tramontano

Women in science: Glass half full?

Lab Matters Ottoline Leyser on the fallacy of failure and the road to self-determination

Building bioinformatics capacity in Africa

People & Perspectives EMBL alumna Nicola Mulder reflects on her pan-African bioinformatics project and its impact

EMBL at NatureJobs careers fair

ConnectionsLab Matters EMBL recently attended the Naturejobs Career Expo, advising scientists about their career options

Accelerate your research with CORBEL

Lab MattersScience & Technology CORBEL Open Call launches October 2016, for access to 15 facilities and 8 research infrastructures

Opinion: 2006, a year of champagne

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Stephen Cusack looks back on the early days of his collaboration with Anacor developing anti-infectives

Opinion: A journey from bench to clinical trials

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Andrés Palencia on the design of compounds that may help fight drug-resistant TB and more

Maltese science: From temples to genomes

ConnectionsLab Matters Celebrating the rich history of scientific contributions in Malta, EMBL's newest member state

Pathways: Community management

People & Perspectives Scientific community manager, alumnus Aidan Budd, connects people with shared interests, values, goals

EMBL Alumni Association Board update

EMBL Announcements EMBL Alumni Association Board review progress and discuss new initiatives

Bork lab peers gather

Lab Matters 27 former Bork lab members joined Peer for a full-day get-together this summer

Unexpected link in protein production

Science & Technology From shared interests at a conference to a surprising discovery

Branches: Laughing matter

People & Perspectives Neuroscientist and comedian Sophie Scott explains the complexity and social importance of laughter

From the Archive: The Moon Dreamers

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Illustrator Edmond Baudoin donates an original artwork to the EMBL Archive

True Love

Science & Technology How transcription factors interact to create a heart

The carbon hijacking network

Science & Technology Plankton network linked to ocean's biological carbon pump revealed

Bioinformatics training in Africa

Connections GOBLET initiative supports pan-African bioinformatics trainers in Cape Town.

Branches: What makes humans tick?

People & PerspectivesScience & Technology What really sets humans apart? Forming societies, teaching and compassion, says Agustin Fuentes.

Using humans as a model organism

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Ewan Birney on the risks, rewards and realities of studying humans as a model species.

Of humans and animals

Lab Matters Halldór Stefánsson on the long history of complex interactions between humans and animals.

Digitally human: texting life ahead

Lab Matters Giuseppe Testa reflects on the myriad intersections of our digital and biological lives.

Reviews: Homo sapiens

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Postdoc Thibaut Brunet reviews two popular science books that explore the rise of Homo sapiens.

Lighting the way

Lab MattersScience & Technology A microscopy technique is poised to shine new light on biological questions: as sheets of light can scan everything from developing embryos to single cells or functioning brains, a technique called light-sheet microscopy is gaining traction. It enables scientists to observe living cells in three…

Floppy but fast

Science & Technology Spaghetti-like proteins are surprisingly effective 'keys'

Nobel connections

ConnectionsLab Matters Amidst the excitement of Nobel Week, behind the scenes of the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.

Ephrussi reunion: face-to-face

Lab Matters Ephrussi group alumni reunite in Heidelberg for a surprise birthday celebration.

Celebrating excellence

People & Perspectives EMBL rewards the special work of alumni through the John Kendrew and Lennart Philipson awards.

Transitions

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Janet Thornton reflects on her time as Director of one of Europe’s fastest growing research institutes.

An ocean odyssey

Science & Technology A journalist who spent six weeks aboard Tara reflects on the expedition’s extraordinary outcomes.

Reviews: Summer reading

Lab Matters What’s on your Summer reading list? Here are some favourites of staff in the Lab.

Branches: Sympathy for the devil

Lab Matters A contagious cancer threatens the Tasmanian devil – extract from Science in School journal.

EMBL Grenoble: Alumni stories

People & Perspectives Alumni Reuben Leberman, Jeremy Smith, Elena Seiradake, and Winfried Weissenhorn share their stories.

One from Many

Lab MattersPeople & Perspectives Database administrator's photo essay reflects internationality and personality of the Genome Campus.

Pandemic! A public event

EMBL-EBI organises an evening of talks and discussion about the global spread of infectious disease.

Why you need an ORCID

Lab Matters Jenny Cham blogs about how ORCID helps distinguish her from all the other Jenny Chams in the world.

ELIXIR accelerates

Lab Matters ELIXIR receives major Horizon 2020 funding to ‘EXCELERATE' activities over the next four years.

Oceans endeavour charts 40 million genes

Science & Technology Tara Oceans results reveal climate change insights, and a treasure trove of novel species and genes.

Inside industry: Part I

Lab Matters Career insights from Riccardo Cortese, whose start-up is developing an Ebola vaccine candidate.

Inside industry: Part II

Lab Matters Alumni in senior positions in industry share career challenges, highlights and EMBL’s continuing role.

Q&A: Research analogies

Lab Matters Q&A: Which analogy best describes your research?

Branches: Science takes centre stage

Ben Lillie takes us on a journey through the art and craft of personal narrative.

Curiosity created the ‘Bubome

Lab Matters Exploring the science and magic of Lil Bub – alumna launches project to sequence the ‘Lilbubome’.

Mourning the loss of Klaus Tschira

Lab Matters Klaus Tschira, a tireless supporter of science, education and talent, died 31 March 2015.

Moving 20 Petabytes

Lab Matters A blog extract by Ewan Birney reflects on the challenges of moving a massive data-centre.

Lights, camera, action

Lab Matters Films by alumnus’ lab shortlisted for 2014 Visualisation Challenge, 'The Vizzies'.

Pathways & Branches: Out of the darkness

Lab Matters How the Rosetta Mission’s comet landing led to unexpected destinations for alumna Karin Ranero,

Reviews: Illuminating stories

Lab Matters Which tales have illuminated something important to you? Staff from the Lab provide their favourite.

Cell control in a flash

Science & Technology From using light to control brain activity to illuminating fruit fly development and mice’s sense of touch

It all started with muscle…

Lab Matters Ken Holmes, one of the visionaries behind EMBL and EMBL Hamburg, looks back to where it all began.

Relaunching YourGenome.org

Lab Matters EMBL-EBI supports relaunch of yourgenome.org, to bring genetics advances to a wider audience.

MASSIF step forward

Science & Technology In two months, 2.3 million diffraction images collected on new, fully automated ESRF/EMBL beamline.

For food – back to EMBL

Lab Matters Get a flavour of the 15th EMBL|EMBO Science and Society Conference from alumnus Freddy Frischknecht.

Events preview and review

Which courses and conferences will you attend in 2015? EMBL’s annual event calendar: out now!

Witamy! EMBL welcomes Poland as prospect member state

In a Statement of Intent signed this month, Poland becomes a prospect member state of EMBL, and the new partners agree to explore possibilities for long-term cooperation, with a view to the country becoming a full member state within three years. “Poland has a strong and active life science…

100 different stories

Lab Matters Drumming, drama, dancing and discovery in a diary of art and science event, Roche Continents.

Reviews: Inspiring stories

Lab Matters Bibliophiles from the Lab pick out the stories that have inspired them at work and elsewhere.

A toast to EMBL

German Science Minister and other honoured guests celebrate 40 years of ‘Learning from life’.

Source of inspiration

Lab Matters PhD student Charles breeze found inspiration at this year's Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting.

11th EMBL Transcription and Chromatin conference

Experts from multiple fields come together to understand how the instructions in genes are read

Hungary joins EMBL as prospect member state

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) welcomes Hungary as its newest prospect member state. In a Statement of Intent signed this month, Hungary and EMBL agree to explore possibilities for long-term cooperation, with a view to the country becoming a full member state within three years.…

Obituary: Stephen Fuller

Lab Matters Stephen Fuller, from 1981–2000 an EMBL postdoc, group leader then Head of Unit, died on 25 August.

Genotype to phenotype mapping course

EMBL-EBI hosts successful first EMBO Practical Course in Genotype to Phenotype Mapping.

40 years learning from life

Obituary: Andrew D. Robertson

Lab Matters Andrew D Robertson, scientific coordinator of EICAT between 2011–12, died on 14 August 2014.

How do animals become domesticated?

Science & Technology Bronwen Aken discusses what research into the rabbit genome reveals about animal domestication.

Unpacking iron overload

Science & Technology A rare form of an iron overload disorder kills pancreatic function, Heidelberg scientists find

EMBanniversary AUSTRIA

Lab Matters Celebrating 50 years of EMBO, 40 years of EMBL and the success of molecular biology in Austria

Reviews: Science on screen

Lab Matters Film enthusiasts from the Lab review their favourite science movies, one for each EMBL decade

Obituary: Christian Boulin

Lab Matters Christian Boulin, EMBL’s Director of Core Facilities and Services, died on 27 April 2014

Q&A

Lab Matters Which scientific breakthroughs would EMBL scientists most like to see in the next 40 years?

Czech Republic becomes EMBL’s 21st member state

EMBL Announcements Forty years after its foundation, EMBL announces its 21st member state: the Czech Republic. Building on a successful bilateral relationship, the Czech Republic’s membership grants Czech scientists access to EMBL’s state-of-the-art instruments, facilities and world-class training…

Argentina joins EMBL as associate member state

EMBL Announcements At a signing ceremony today, Argentina joins the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) as an associate member state. The move strengthens the ties between the European and Latin American life science communities. It grants Argentinian scientists access to EMBL’s world-class facilities and…

Where do you start when developing a new medicine?

ConnectionsLab Matters A pioneering public-private research initiative between GSK, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is to harness the power of ‘big data’ and genome sequencing to improve the success rate for discovering new medicines. The new Centre for…

Slovak Republic becomes EMBL Prospect Member State

EMBL Announcements The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) welcomes the Slovak Republic as the first country to join its new Prospect Member scheme. In a Statement of Intent signed last month, the Slovak Republic and EMBL agree to explore the possibilities for long-term cooperation, with a view to the…

Pan-European imaging infrastructure gains momentum

ConnectionsLab Matters Europe is uniting to make state-of-the-art imaging technologies accessible to biomedical researchers throughout the continent in a concerted manner. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and seven countries (Belgium, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom)…

Making your brain social

Science & Technology In many people with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, different parts of the brain don’t talk to each other very well. Scientists have now identified, for the first time, a way in which this decreased functional connectivity can come about. In a study published online today…

What are you scared of?

Science & Technology What do bullies and sex have in common? Based on work by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy, it seems that the same part of the brain reacts to both. In a study published today in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers found that – at least in…

Bigger, better, faster

Science & Technology The molecular machine that makes essential components of ribosomes – the cell’s protein factories – is like a Swiss-army knife, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas in Madrid, Spain, have found.…

Choreographed origami

Science & Technology An important step in building ribosomes – the cell’s protein factories – is like a strictly choreographed dance, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered. To build these factories, other ‘machines’ inside the cell have to…

Without a trace

Science & Technology Migrating cells, it seems, cover their tracks not for fear of being followed, but to keep moving forward. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have now shown that cells in a zebrafish embryo determine which direction they move in by effectively…

Potential new drug target for cystic fibrosis

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and Regensburg University, both in Germany, and the University of Lisboa, in Portugal, have discovered a promising potential drug target for cystic fibrosis. Their work, published online today in Cell, also uncovers a…

From fireman to arsonist

Science & Technology Like a fireman who becomes an arsonist, a protein that prevents cells becoming cancerous can also cause tumours, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have discovered. The finding, published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, stems…

PS: It’s not cholesterol

Science & Technology How our body processes cholesterol has a well-known impact on our health, but it turns out that another ‘fat molecule’ – or lipid – may be at the heart of some diseases which were thought to involve cholesterol. A group of proteins linked to conditions such as metabolic syndrome and some…

Cells eat themselves into shape

Science & Technology The process cells use to ‘swallow’ up nutrients, hormones and other signals from their environment – called endocytosis – can play a crucial role in shaping the cells themselves, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have found. The study,…

How to build your gate

Science & Technology It’s a parent’s nightmare: opening a Lego set and being faced with 500 pieces, but no instructions on how to assemble them into the majestic castle shown on the box. Thanks to a new approach by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany,…

But what does it do?

Science & Technology Although we know the tool’s general purpose, it can sometimes be difficult to tell if a specific pair of precision tweezers belongs to a surgeon or a master jeweller. It is now easier to solve similar conundrums about a type of protein that allows cells to react to their environment, thanks to…

Pushing the boundaries of transcription

Science & Technology Like musicians in an orchestra who have the same musical score but start and finish playing at different intervals, cells with the same genes start and finish transcribing them at different points in the genome. For the first time, researchers at EMBL have described the striking diversity of…

Become a member of Euro-BioImaging

ConnectionsLab Matters Euro-BioImaging, the pan-European open access research infrastructure for biological and medical imaging technologies, invites leading European imaging facilities to submit proposals to participate. Applications to become a Euro-BioImaging node will be reviewed by a board of independent…

Havoc in biology’s most-used human cell line

Science & Technology HeLa cells are the world’s most commonly used human cell lines, and have served as a standard for understanding many fundamental biological processes. In a study published today in G3: Genes, Genomes and Genetics online, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in…

Denmark joins the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine

ConnectionsLab Matters Today, the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine celebrates two important milestones: the renewal of the partnership agreement for an extended period of 10 years, and the expansion of the Nordic EMBL network with the official opening of the Danish Research Institute of Translational…

DNA’s twisted communication

Science & Technology During embryo development, genes are dynamically, and very precisely, switched on and off to confer different properties to different cells and build a well-proportioned and healthy animal. Fgf8 is one of the key genes in this process, controlling in particular the growth of the limbs and…

Zeroing in on heart disease

Science & Technology Studies screening the genome of hundreds of thousands of individuals (known as Genome-wide association studies or GWAS) have linked more than 100 regions in the genome to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the…

One disease, two mechanisms

Science & Technology While prostate cancer is the most common cancer in elderly Western men it also, but more rarely, strikes patients aged between 35 and 50. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in collaboration with several other research teams in Germany*, have…

Learning from the linker

Science & Technology Mature cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency and thus regain the ability to divide and differentiate into specialized cell types. Although these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) represent a milestone in stem cell research, many of the biochemical processes that underlie…

The mutation police

Science & Technology Scientists at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK have discovered how our genome keeps the effects of mutations in check. The discovery, published in the journal Cell, will help in the study of diseases such as cancer and…

EMBL-EBI researchers make DNA storage a reality

Science & Technology Researchers at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have created a way to store data in the form of DNA – a material that lasts for tens of thousands of years. The new method, published today in the journal Nature, makes it possible to store at least 100 million hours of…

The cell that isn’t

Science & Technology This may look like yet another video of a dividing cell, but there’s a catch. You are looking at chromosomes (red) being pulled apart by the mitotic spindle (green), but it’s not a cell, because there’s no cell membrane. Like a child sucking an egg out of its shell, Ivo Telley from the…

Protein production: going viral

Science & Technology A research team of scientists from EMBL Grenoble and the IGBMC in Strasbourg, France, have, for the first time, described in molecular detail the architecture of the central scaffold of TFIID: the human protein complex essential for transcription from DNA to mRNA. The study, published today…

Sync to grow

Science & Technology Gene expression wave in the lower part of the future vertebrae column of a mammalian embryo. As the wave goes forward, new pre-vertebrae are formed and the future vertebrae column elongates. (Image and video credit: Nature) In a nutshell: The size of pre-vertebrae in a mammalian embryo is…

My microbes

Science & Technology In a nutshell : The gut metagenome is the collection of all the genomes of all the microbes  in the human intestinal tract : it is specific to each human, like a second genetic signature At least in healthy humans, this personal metagenome is stable over time The gut metagenome is…

Spot the difference

Science & Technology In a nutshell: 1st map combining human genetic variation at different scales – from single letters to large chunks Based on genomes of 1092 healthy people from Europe, the Americas and East Asia Could help identify genetic causes of disease, rather than just links Data made freely available in…

Loop the loop, DNA style

Science & Technology In a nutshell: Looping and unlooping DNA adjusts readout from gene and spread of regulation throughout the genome When a gene forms a loop, its output increases, as the transcription machinery that reads it is trapped into moving only along that gene When the gene loop is undone, transcription…

Cellular eavesdropping made easy

Science & Technology In a nutshell: New method allows precise analysis of proteins released by cells over time (distinguishes them from proteins in the cells’ culture serum) Advantages: cells don’t have to be starved: avoids bias and allows more cell types to be studied; can follow fast reactions like immune…

Fast forward for biomedical research

Science & Technology Today, an international team of researchers reveal that much of what has been called ‘junk DNA’ in the human genome is actually a massive control panel with millions of switches regulating the activity of our genes. Without these switches, genes would not work – and mutations in these regions…

How the cell swallows

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have combined the power of two kinds of microscope to produce a 3-dimensional movie of how cells ‘swallow’ nutrients and other molecules by engulfing them. The study, published today in Cell, is the…

Catching the cap-snatcher

Science & Technology Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have determined the detailed 3-dimensional structure of part of the flu virus’ RNA polymerase, an enzyme that is crucial for influenza virus replication. This important finding is published today in PLoS…

Of flies and men

Science & Technology What do you get when you dissect 10 000 fruit-fly larvae? A team of researchers led by the EMBL- European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in the UK and the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI) in Germany has discovered a way in which cells can adjust the activity of many…

Italy pledges to be part of ELIXIR research infrastructure

Connections Italy has pledged to participate in ELIXIR, a major undertaking to safeguard the results of life science research in Europe. With one of Europe’s larger economies now demonstrating its commitment to ELIXIR, this burgeoning research infrastructure is well placed to continue its excellent progress.…

Stop and go

Science & Technology A traffic policeman standing at a busy intersection directing the flow of vehicles may be a rare sight these days, but a similar scene appears to still frequently play out in our cells. A protein called Lem4 directs a crucial step of cell division by preventing the progress of one molecule while…

Flu fighters

Science & Technology Savira pharmaceuticals GmbH, a spin-off of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) based in Vienna, Austria, has signed a collaboration and license agreement with Roche, thus further strengthening the links between fundamental research and major pharmaceutical development companies. This…

Shape-shifting shell

Science & Technology As a retrovirus matures, the two parts of its shell protein (red and blue or yellow and blue) dramatically rearrange themselves, twisting and moving away from each other. (Credit: EMBL/T.Bharat) Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have for the…

Video Release: Filming life in the fast lane

Science & Technology “This video shows a fruit fly embryo from when it was about two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva, 20 hours later,” says Lars Hufnagel, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. “It shows all the hallmarks of fruit fly…

Export extravaganza

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have conducted the first comprehensive census of human cells’ export workers. In a study published online today in Nature Cell Biology, they found an unexpected variety of genes involved in transporting…

The cell’s ‘New World’

Science & Technology In one of the most famous faux pas of exploration, Columbus set sail for India and instead ‘discovered’ America. Similarly, when scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, set out to find enzymes – the proteins that carry out chemical…

Picture Release: More than meets the eye

Science & Technology These spheres may look almost identical, but subtle differences between them revealed a molecular version of the robots from Transformers. Each sphere is a vesicle, a pod that cells use to transport materials between different compartments. The images, produced by Marco Faini from John…

Locating ground zero

Science & Technology Like emergency workers rushing to a disaster scene, cells called microglia speed to places where the brain has been injured, to contain the damage by ‘eating up’ any cellular debris and dead or dying neurons. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany,…

Picture release: Spring tails

Science & Technology As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere – even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. But the ‘flowers’ in this picture actually help an animal, not a plant, to pass on its genes. The image, which has been false-coloured…

Need for speed

Science & Technology Like any law-abiding train passenger, a molecule called oskar RNA carries a stamped ticket detailing its destination and form of transport, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have found. They show that for this molecule, moving in the…

Flying high in Europe

Science & Technology Today a consortium of leading IT providers and three of Europe’s biggest research centres (CERN, EMBL and ESA) announced a partnership to launch a European cloud computing platform. ‘Helix Nebula ‐ the Science Cloud’, will support the massive IT requirements of European…

Making the most of what you have

Science & Technology The bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes atypical pneumonia, is helping scientists uncover how cells make the most of limited resources. By measuring all the proteins this bacterium produces, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and…

New distributed research infrastructure for structural biology

Science & Technology Breakthroughs in biomedical science are a step closer today, with the launch of a new distributed research infrastructure for the science of structural biology: Instruct. The launch of Instruct will give academic and commercial scientists across Europe access to a full portfolio of integrated…

Trapped in a ring

Science & Technology In fairy tales, magic rings endow their owners with special abilities: the ring makes the wearer invisible, fulfils his wishes, or otherwise helps the hero on the path to his destiny.  Similarly, a ring-like structure found in a protein complex called ‘Elongator’ has led researchers at the…

Stretching helices help keep muscles together

Science & Technology Myomesin stretching to 2.5 times its length. Credit: EMBL/Wilmanns. In this video, a protein called myomesin does its impression of Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the Fantastic Four of comic book fame, who performed incredible feats by stretching his body. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology…

Collective action

Science & Technology If you wanted to draw your family tree, you could start by searching for people who share your surname. Cells, of course, don’t have surnames, but scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have found that genetic switches called enhancers, and the…

Rigged to explode?

Science & Technology An inherited mutation in a gene known as the guardian of the genome is likely the link between exploding chromosomes and some particularly aggressive types of cancer, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) and the University…

Evolution by ‘copy-paste’

Science & Technology A team of geneticists and computational biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cancer Research UK reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome…

Tracking genes’ remote controls

Science & Technology As an embryo develops, different genes are turned on in different cells, to form muscles, neurons and other bodily parts. Inside each cell’s nucleus, genetic sequences known as enhancers act like remote controls, switching genes on and off. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory…

UK invests £75 million in European research infrastructure to support knowledge-based economy

Lab Matters The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) warmly welcome today’s announcement from the UK Government of a £75 million commitment from the Department for Business, Innovation…

Intruder detected: raise the alarm!

Science & Technology When a thief breaks into a bank vault, sensors are activated and the alarm is raised. Cells have their own early-warning system for intruders, and scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have discovered how a particular protein sounds that alarm when it…

Five countries and EMBL sign Memorandum of Understanding to make ELIXIR a reality

Lab Matters Today marks an important step for ELIXIR, Europe’s emerging research infrastructure for life-science information, as five countries plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to catalyse the implementation and construction of ELIXIR. The…

Fishing games gone wrong

Science & Technology When an egg cell is being formed, the cellular machinery which separates chromosomes is extremely imprecise at fishing them out of the cell’s interior, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered. The unexpected degree of trial-and-error…

Live from the scene: biochemistry in action

Science & Technology Researchers can now watch molecules move in living cells, literally millisecond by millisecond, thanks to a new microscope developed by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Published online today in Nature Biotechnology, the new technique provides…

Gardening in the brain

Science & Technology Gardeners know that some trees require regular pruning: some of their branches have to be cut so that others can grow stronger. The same is true of the developing brain: cells called microglia prune the connections between neurons, shaping how the brain is wired, scientists at the European…

A hot species for cool structures

Science & Technology A fungus that lives at extremely high temperatures could help understand structures within our own cells. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Heidelberg University, both in Heidelberg, Germany, were the first to sequence and analyse the genome of a heat-loving fungus,…

Obituary – Lennart Philipson

Lab Matters Lennart Philipson, who served as EMBL’s second Director General, has passed away. Lennart headed EMBL for over a decade between 1982-93, a crucial time for molecular biology when different scientific disciplines in the life sciences were becoming increasingly interlinked. He reorganised the…

Keeping it together

Science & Technology As any rock-climber knows, trailing a long length of rope behind you is not easy. A dangling length of rope is unwieldy and hard to manoeuvre, and can get tangled up or stuck on an outcropping. Cells face the same problem when dragging chromosomes apart during cell division. The chromosomes are…

What’s your gut type?

Science & Technology In the future, when you walk into a doctor’s surgery or hospital, you could be asked not just about your allergies and blood group, but also about your gut type. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and collaborators in the international MetaHIT…

The informant: a jumping gene

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have developed a new method for studying gene regulation, by employing a jumping gene as an informant. Published online today in Nature Genetics, the new method is called GROMIT. It enables researchers to…

Small code change, big effect

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have developed a new method which enables researchers to label any protein of their choice with any of a wide variety of previously available compounds, in living cells, by introducing a single reactive…

Suggesting genes’ friends, facebook-style

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), both in Heidelberg, Germany, have developed a new method that uncovers the combined effects of genes. Published online today in Nature Methods, it helps understand how different genes can…

European Commission and EMBL renew cooperation

Lab Matters In a Memorandum of Understanding signed today, the European Commission (EC) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) formalise their desire to maintain and further develop their cooperation. “I am delighted to sign the renewed and strengthened Memorandum of Understanding between the…

Two in one

Science & Technology In a paper published online today in PNAS, scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, reveal new insights into the workings of enzymes from a group of bacteria including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. The new findings…

BBSRC and EMBL-EBI welcome UK funds earmarked for major bioscience data infrastructure project

Lab Matters The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) welcome news that funding has been earmarked from the UK’s Large Facilities Capital Fund for ELIXIR – the European Life-science…

Blood-clotting protein linked to cancer and septicaemia

Science & Technology In our not-so-distant evolutionary past, stress often meant imminent danger, and the risk of blood loss, so part of our body’s stress response is to stock-pile blood-clotting factors. Scientists in the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU), a collaboration between the European Molecular…

The human genome’s breaking points

Science & Technology A detailed analysis of data from 185 human genomes sequenced in the course of the 1000 Genomes Project, by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in collaboration with researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, as well as the…

Intelligent microscopy

Science & Technology The sight of a researcher sitting at a microscope for hours, painstakingly searching for the right cells, may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to new software created by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Presented today in Nature Methods, the…

How cells export and embed proteins in the membrane

Science & Technology Like an overprotective parent on the first day of school, a targeting factor sometimes needs a little push to let go of its cargo. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have visualised one such hand-over. They were the first to determine the structure…

Better imaging from bench to bedside

Science & Technology From microscopy to computer tomography (CT) scans, imaging plays an important role in biological and biomedical research, but obtaining high-quality images often requires advanced technology and expertise, and can be costly. Euro-BioImaging, a project which launches its preparatory phase today,…

One-touch make-up – for our cells

Science & Technology The cells in the different parts of this video are always the same (grey), but, like actors using make-up to highlight different facial features, they have fluorescent labels that mark different cellular components in different colours: blue shows the nucleus, yellow shows tubulin (a component of…

European XFEL joins EIROforum

Lab Matters At the Autumn 2010Council meeting of the EIROforum, a partnership of seven European intergovernmental research organisations with large research infrastructures, the Directors General unanimously accepted the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL), based in Hamburg, Germany, to…

1000 Genomes Project ushers in new era for human genetics

Science & Technology The 1000 Genomes Project, a major international collaboration to build a detailed map of human genetic variation, has completed its pilot phase. The results are now published in the journal Nature and freely available through the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics…

Brainy worms: Evolution of the cerebral cortex

Science & Technology Our cerebral cortex, or pallium, is a big part of what makes us human: art, literature and science would not exist had this most fascinating part of our brain not emerged in some less intelligent ancestor in prehistoric times. But when did this occur and what were these ancestors? Unexpectedly,…

Freeze or run? Not that simple

Science & Technology Fear can make you run, it can make you fight, and it can glue you to the spot. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy and GlaxoSmithKline in Verona, Italy, have identified not only the part of the brain but the specific type of neurons that determine…

Constant overlap

Science & Technology During cell division, microtubules emanating from each of the spindle poles meet and overlap in the spindle’s midzone. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have uncovered the molecular mechanism that determines the extent of this overlap. In a…

Supply and demand

Science & Technology Most organisms need iron to survive, but too much iron is toxic, and can cause fatal organ failure. The same is true inside cells, where iron balance must also be maintained. In a study published today in Cell Metabolism, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg,…

Digital Embryo gains wings

Science & Technology The scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, who ‘fathered’ the Digital Embryo have now given it wings, creating the Fly Digital Embryo. In work published today in Nature Methods, they were able to capture fruit fly development on film, and were the…

A life-changing partnership

Science & Technology Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Max-Planck Institute of Immunobiology Freiburg have identified a novel protein complex that regulates around 4000 genes in the fruit fly Drosophila and likely plays an important role in mammals, too.…

Making enough red blood cells

Science & Technology Red blood cells, the delivery men that take oxygen to cells all around the body, have short lives. To keep enough of them in circulation, the human body produces around 2 million of these cells every second – even more in response to challenges like severe blood loss. In a study published today…

Tags on, tags off

Science & Technology During embryonic development, proteins called Polycomb group complexes turn genes off when and where their activity must not be present, preventing specialised tissues and organs from forming in the wrong places. They also play an important role in processes like stem cell differentiation and…

Variations on the genetic theme

Science & Technology Just like members of an orchestra are active at different times although playing the same piece of music, every cell in our body contains the same genetic sequence but expresses this differently to give rise to cells and tissues with specialised properties. By integrating gene expression data from…

Movies for the human genome

Science & Technology Name a human gene, and you’ll find a movie online showing you what happens to cells when it is switched off. This is the resource that researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and their collaborators in the Mitocheck consortium are making freely…

What makes us unique? Not only our genes

Science & Technology Once the human genome was sequenced in 2001, the hunt was on for the genes that make each of us unique. But scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and Yale and Stanford Universities in the USA, have found that we differ from each other mainly because…

The Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine officially inaugurates the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland in Helsinki

Lab Matters Today, the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine officially inaugurates the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) in Helsinki. Together with the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM, University of Oslo) and the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS, Umeå…

New training and conference centre for the life sciences at EMBL in Heidelberg

Lab Matters Today, the German Minister for Education and Research, Annette Schavan, officially opens the new training and conference centre for the life sciences on the campus of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. “This new centre in Heidelberg will form a central European…

Bacterial balance that keeps us healthy

Science & Technology The thousands of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that live in our gut are essential contributors to our good health. They break down toxins, manufacture some vitamins and essential amino acids, and form a barrier against invaders. A study published today in Nature shows that, at 3.3 million,…

MicroRNA: a glimpse into the past

Science & Technology The last ancestor we shared with worms, which roamed the seas around 600 million years ago, may already have had a sophisticated brain that released hormones into the blood and was connected to various sensory organs. The evidence comes not from a newly found fossil but from the study of microRNAs…

How to shoot the messenger

Science & Technology Cells rely on a range of signalling systems to communicate with each other and to control their own internal workings. Scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, have now found a way to hack into a vital communications system, raising the possibility of…

Membrane-coat proteins: bacteria have them too

Science & Technology Although they are present almost everywhere, on land and sea, a group of related bacteria in the superphylum Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae, or PVC, have remained in relative obscurity ever since they were first described about a decade ago. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology…

Open access drug discovery database launches with half a million compounds

Science & Technology ChEMBLdb, a vast online database of information on the properties and activities of drugs and drug-like small molecules and their targets, launches today with information on over half a million compounds. The data lie at the heart of translating information from the human genome into successful new…

The Battle of the Sexes

Science & Technology Is it a boy or a girl? Expecting parents may be accustomed to this question, but contrary to what they may think, the answer doesn’t depend solely on their child’s sex chromosomes. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany and the Medical Research…

From fruit fly wings to heart failure. Why Not(ch)?

Science & Technology Almost a century after it was discovered in fruit flies with notches in their wings, the Notch signalling pathway may come to play an important role in the recovery from heart attacks. In a study published today in Circulation Research, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)…

First-ever blueprint of a minimal cell is more complex than expected

Science & Technology What are the bare essentials of life, the indispensable ingredients required to produce a cell that can survive on its own? Can we describe the molecular anatomy of a cell, and understand how an entire organism functions as a system? These are just some of the questions that scientists in a…

Drought resistance explained

Science & Technology Much as adrenaline coursing through our veins drives our body’s reactions to stress, the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) is behind plants’ responses to stressful situations such as drought, but how it does so has been a mystery for years. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology…

Deciphering the regulatory code

Science & Technology Embryonic development is like a well-organised building project, with the embryo’s DNA serving as the blueprint from which all construction details are derived. Cells carry out different functions according to a developmental plan, by expressing, i.e. turning on, different combinations of genes.…

From foe to friend: mosquitoes that transmit malaria may help fight the disease

Science & Technology For many years, the mosquitoes that transmit malaria to humans were seen as public enemies, and campaigns to eradicate the disease focused on eliminating the mosquitoes. But, as a study published today in Science shows, the mosquitoes can also be our allies in the fight against this common foe,…

Putting the squeeze on sperm DNA

Science & Technology In the quest for speed, olympic swimmers shave themselves or squeeze into high-tech super-suits. In the body, sperm are the only cells that swim and, as speed is crucial to fertility, have developed their own ways to become exceptionally streamlined. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology…

To regenerate muscle, cellular garbage men must become builders

Science & Technology For scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy, what seemed like a disappointing result turned out to be an important discovery. Their findings, published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provide…

How stem cells make skin

Science & Technology Stem cells have a unique ability: when they divide, they can either give rise to more stem cells, or to a variety of specialised cell types. In both mice and humans, a layer of cells at the base of the skin contains stem cells that can develop into the specialised cells in the layers above.…

UK leads European research programme with £10M investment in bioscience data handling capacity

Lab Matters BBSRC has awarded funding to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), based at Hinxton near Cambridge, to permit a dramatic increase in the institute’s data storage and handling capacity. The funding is the first step in developing the existing…

Raising the alarm when DNA goes bad

Science & Technology Our genome is constantly under attack from things like UV light and toxins, which can damage or even break DNA strands and ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases. Scientists have known for a long time that when DNA is damaged, a key enzyme sets off a cellular ‘alarm bell’ to alert the…

Scientists open doors to diagnosis of emphysema

Science & Technology Chronic inflammatory lung diseases like chronic bronchitis and emphysema are a major global health problem, and the fourth leading cause of death and disability in developed countries, with smoking accounting for 90% of the risk for developing them. Work by scientists at the European Molecular…

Scientists identify cholesterol-regulating genes

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University of Heidelberg, Germany, have come a step closer to understanding how cholesterol levels are regulated. In a study published today in the journal Cell Metabolism, the researchers identified 20 genes that are involved…

New interdisciplinary structural biology centre for virus research and technology platforms

Lab Matters On June 26 2009 the joint international Unit for Virus and Host Cell Interactions (Unité Mixte Internationale) was formally established in Grenoble. The unit is run jointly by CNRS, the Grenoble outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Grenoble University Joseph…

Uncovering how cells cover gaps

Science & Technology Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, came a step closer to understanding how cells close gaps not only during embryonic development but also during wound healing. Their study, published this week in the journal Cell, uncovers a fundamental…

New electron microscopy images reveal the assembly of HIV

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany, have produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which shows the structure of the immature form of the virus at unprecedented detail. Immature HIV is…

European centre of excellence for mouse biology celebrates its 10th anniversary

Lab Matters Mice are one of biology’s most important model organisms, because 98% of their genes and many of their traits and diseases are similar to ours. Researchers at the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) take advantage of these similarities and use mice to study…

New EMBL service makes web browsing efficient for biologists

Science & Technology The life sciences are scaling up and produce huge amounts of data and new literature at an amazing pace. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) now offers a new free service to help researchers, teachers and students keep up-to-date with scientific literature on the web, especially when…

Sugarcoating fruit fly development

Science & Technology Proteins are the executive agents that carry out all processes in a cell. Their activity is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to and removed from the protein. 25 years after its first discovery, researchers at the European Molecular Biology…

Getting a grip on complexes: EMBL scientists develop first fully automated pipeline for multiprotein complex production

Science & Technology Most cellular processes are carried out by molecular machines that consist of many interacting proteins. These protein complexes lie at the heart of life science research, but they are notoriously hard to study. Their abundance is often too low to extract them directly from cells and generating…

Recycler protein helps prevent disease

Science & Technology Recycling is important not only on a global scale, but also at the cellular level, since key molecules tend to be available in limited numbers. This means a cell needs to have efficient recycling mechanisms. Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Heidelberg University,…

New study reveals the protein that makes phosphate chains in yeast

Science & Technology It can be found in all life forms, and serves a multitude of purposes, from energy storage to stress response to bone calcification. This molecular jack-of-all trades is polyphosphate, a long chain of phosphate molecules. Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in…

Picture Release

Science & Technology ‘Useless fish with big eyes’. This is what Medaka, the name of the Japanese killifish in the pictures, means in Japan where it originally comes from. While its eyes are undeniably big, the fish has proven remarkably useful for scientists. It is a simple model organism, amenable to…

New findings reveal how influenza virus hijacks human cells

Science & Technology Influenza is and remains a disease to reckon with. Seasonal epidemics around the world kill several hundred thousand people every year. In the light of looming pandemics if bird flu strains develop the ability to infect humans easily, new drugs and vaccines are desperately sought. Researchers at…

Re-write the textbooks: transcription is bidirectional

Science & Technology Genes that contain instructions for making proteins make up less than 2% of the human genome. Yet, for unknown reasons, most of our genome is transcribed into RNA. The same is true for many other organisms that are easier to study than humans. Researchers in the groups of Lars Steinmetz at the…

Leica Microsystems to become Founder Partner of EMBL Advanced Training Centre

Lab Matters Microscope designer Leica Microsystems and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) signed a corporate partnership agreement today whereby Leica Microsystems becomes a founder partner of the EMBL Advanced Training Centre scheduled to be completed in September 2009. Besides its financial…

Picture Release

Science & Technology Cell division is one of the most fundamental processes of life. It explains how one cell can give rise to an organism of several million cells, it determines the shape of different life forms and it underpins our body’s capacity to heal when injured. Often we only notice how important cell…

EMBL and PerkinElmer announce corporate partnership to support EMBL Advanced Training Centre

Lab Matters The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences, a global leader in life science research, drug discovery and cellular science, today announced that they have entered into a corporate partnership in support of EMBL’s Advanced Training Centre in…

Uncovering secrets of life in the ocean

Science & Technology The best-selling novel The swarm captured the imagination of countless readers with the fascination of marine life. But it also showed how little we understand life in the depth of the ocean. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI)…

Picture Release

Science & Technology What at the first sight could be pictures of planets or other cosmic structures are actually microscope images of balls (cysts) of human kidney cells. They were taken by Emmanuel Reynaud, in the group of Ernst Stelzer at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), with a widefield microscope.…

Researchers establish international human microbiome consortium

Lab Matters Today at a meeting organised by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, scientists from around the globe announced the formation of the International Human Microbiome Consortium (IHMC), an effort that will enable researchers to characterise the relationship of the…

Digital zebrafish embryo provides the first complete developmental blueprint of a vertebrate

Science & Technology Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have generated a digital zebrafish embryo – the first complete developmental blueprint of a vertebrate. With a newly developed microscope scientists could for the first time track all cells for the first 24 hours in the life of a…

Open access to large-scale drug discovery data

Lab Matters The Wellcome Trust has awarded £4.7 million (€5.8 million) to EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) to support the transfer of a large collection of information on the properties and activities of drugs and a large set of drug-like small molecules from the publicly listed…

Pregnant mice block out unwelcome admirers to protect their pups

Science & Technology Mouse mothers-to-be have a remarkable way to protect their unborn pups. Because the smell of a strange male’s urine can cause miscarriage and reactivate the ovulatory cycle, pregnant mice prevent the action of such olfactory stimuli by blocking their smell. Researchers from the European…

Teaching old drugs new tricks

Science & Technology Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) discovered a new way to make use of drugs’ unwanted side effects. They developed a computational method that compares how similar the side effects of different drugs are and predicts how likely the drugs act on the same target…

Zooming in on genetic shuffling

Science & Technology Genetic recombination, the process by which sexually reproducing organisms shuffle their genetic material when producing germ cells, leads to offspring with a new genetic make-up and influences the course of evolution. In the current issue of Nature, researchers at the European Molecular…

New research sheds light on the molecular basis of crib death

Science & Technology Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a condition that unexpectedly and unexplainably takes the lives of seemingly healthy babies aged between a month and a year. Now researchers of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy, have developed a mouse model of the so-called crib…

Scientists fix bugs in our understanding of evolution

Science & Technology What makes a human different from a chimp? Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have come one important step closer to answering such evolutionary questions correctly. In the current issue of Science they uncover…

X chromosome exposed

Science & Technology Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have revealed new insights into how sex chromosomes are regulated. A chromatin modifying enzyme helps compensate for the fact that…

Securing the future of Europe’s biological data resources

Lab Matters In a contract signed today, the European Commission has awarded €4.5 million to a pan-European consortium to decide upon the best way to unite Europe’s biological data resources into a sustainable, integrative bioinformatics network for the life sciences. The European Life-science…

Platypus genome sequence published

Science & Technology UK-based researchers at the Medical Research Council Functional Genomics Unit in Oxford and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge have revealed the genetic makeup of the one of the world’s strangest mammals. They have analysed the DNA…

Getting wise to the influenza virus’ tricks

Science & Technology Influenza is currently a grave concern for governments and health organisations around the world. Now one of the tactics used by influenza virus to take over the machinery of infected cells has been laid bare by structural biologists at the EMBL, the joint Unit of Virus Host-Cell Interaction of…

An unexpected way to cause leukaemia

Science & Technology Leukaemia – cancer of blood or bone marrow – is caused by mutations that allow defective blood cells to accumulate and displace healthy blood. To devise effective therapies it is crucial to know which mutations cause leukaemia and which cell type gives rise to leukaemic cells. Researchers from…

New revelations in epigenetic control shed light on breast cancer

Science & Technology Epigenetic regulation – modifications to the structure of chromatin that influence which genes are expressed in a cell – is a key player in embryonic development and cancer formation. Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg now gained new insight…

Europe’s most common genetic disease is a liver disorder

Science & Technology Much less widely known than the dangerous consequences of iron deficiencies is the fact that too much iron can also cause problems. The exact origin of the genetic iron overload disorder hereditary hemochromatosis [HH] has remained elusive. In a joint effort, researchers from the European Molecular…

International consortium announces the 1000 Genomes Project

Lab Matters Drawing on the expertise of multi-disciplinary research teams, the map developed by the 1000 Genomes Project will provide a view of biomedically relevant DNA variations at a resolution unmatched by current resources. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), working with long-term collaborator…

Life savers in the gut

Science & Technology Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have discovered that proteins that regulate the body’s iron household play a vital role in making sure enough nutrients and water are absorbed in the intestine. Mice lacking these proteins suffer from weight loss and…

An ambulance man for muscle damage

Science & Technology It does not take much to injure a muscle. Sometimes one sudden, inconsiderate movement does the job. Unfortunately, damaged muscles are not as efficient at repair as other tissues such as bone. Researchers of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s Mouse Biology Unit (EMBL), Italy, and…

ArrayExpress database doubles in size to 100,000 hybridisations

Lab Matters ArrayExpress, the publicly available database of transcriptomics data at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), has doubled in size in 2007, reaching the 100,000-hybridisation milestone. The database now holds snapshots of gene expression…

The closest look ever at native human tissue

Science & Technology Seeing proteins in their natural environment and interactions inside cells has been a longstanding goal. Using an advanced microscopy technique called cryo-electron tomography, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have visualised proteins responsible for cell-cell…

How cells keep in shape

Science & Technology Cells in our body come in various shapes and sizes. Each cell is shaped in such a way as to optimise it for a specific function. When things go wrong and a cell does not adopt its dedicated shape, its function can be impaired and the cell can cause problems in the body. Researchers at […]

Luxembourg joins EMBL

Lab Matters Today, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) announces Luxembourg as the new member of its international community. Accepted by EMBL’s council and ratified by the parliament of Luxembourg, the Grand-Duchy has officially joined the institute as the 20th member state. “EMBL is…

The East Wing and a new dawn for the EMBL-EBI

Lab Matters The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) officially opens its new East Wing today with a reception for prominent guests. The East Wing will be jointly opened by Ian Pearson, Minister of State for Science and Innovation, UK, and Robert-Jan Smits,…

Scientists uncover how hormones achieve their effects

Science & Technology New insights into the cellular signal chain through which pheromones stimulate mating in yeast have been gained by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL]. Similar signal chains are found in humans, where they are involved in many important processes such as the…

EMBL reaches north

Lab Matters Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the University of Helsinki, Finland, the University of Oslo, Norway, and Umeå University, Sweden, officially launch their new Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine. The agreement will encourage scientific exchange and collaborations…

A molecule that protects from neuronal disorders

Science & Technology Many neuronal disorders, including epilepsy, schizophrenia and lissencephaly ─ a form of mental retardation ─ result from abnormal migration of nerve cells during the development of the brain. Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy,…

New 3D light microscopy method reveals new perspectives on the dynamics of the cell’s skeleton

Science & Technology Scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have developed a new method to prepare and image biological samples in three dimensions with laser light-sheet based fluorescence microscopy. The technological advance, which is published in the current online issue of Nature…

Minimum Information Standards ─ all for one and one for all

Lab Matters Three papers published by EMBL scientists and their collaborators will make it much easier to share and compare information from large-scale proteomics data. The papers are published in Nature Biotechnology on 8 and 26 August. As the quantity of available biological information and the use of…

A unique arrangement for egg cell division

Science & Technology Which genes are passed on from mother to child is decided very early on during the maturation of the egg cell in the ovary. In a cell division process that is unique to egg cells, half of the chromosomes are eliminated from the egg before it is fertilised. Using a powerful microscope, researchers…

Uncovering the secrets of the deep

Science & Technology The UniProt Consortium, which includes the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), has added a new database repository for metagenomic and environmental data to its family of protein sequence databases. Metagenomics is the large-scale genomic…

EMBL expands to Australia

Lab Matters Today, delegates representing the 19 member states of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) offered Australia associate membership in EMBL’s international community. The membership is planned to start officially in January 2008 and will initially last for seven years. “EMBL…

A stepwise retreat: how immune cells catch pathogens

Science & Technology To protect us from disease our immune system employs macrophages, cells that roam our body in search of disease-causing bacteria. With the help of long tentacle-like protrusions, macrophages can catch suspicious particles, pull them towards their cell bodies, internalise and destroy them. Using a…

A gene that protects from kidney disease

Science & Technology Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University of Michigan have discovered a gene that protects us against a serious kidney disease. In the current online issue of Nature Genetics they report that mutations in the gene cause nephronopthisis (NPHP) in humans and…

Modern brains have an ancient core

Science & Technology Hormones control growth, metabolism, reproduction and many other important biological processes. In humans, and all other vertebrates, the chemical signals are produced by specialised brain centres such as the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood stream that distributes them around the body.…

New compound effectively treats fungal infections

Science & Technology A new mechanism to attack hard-to-treat fungal infections has been revealed by scientists from the biotech company Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., California, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] outstation in Grenoble, France. In the current issue of Science they describe…

Casting the molecular net

Science & Technology Scientists at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital (Canada), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Germany), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) have created a new computational method called NetworKIN. This method uses biological networks to better…

New findings challenge established views about human genome

Science & Technology The ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE), an international research consortium organised by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today published the results of its exhaustive, four-year effort to build a “parts list” of…

Researchers shed light on shrinking of chromosomes

Science & Technology A human cell contains an enormous 1.8 metres of DNA partitioned into 46 chromosomes. These have to be copied and distributed equally into two daughter cells at every division. Condensation, the shortening of chromosomes, allows the cell to handle such huge amounts of genetic material during cell…

Uncovering the molecular basis of obesity

Science & Technology Why does the same diet make some of us gain more weight than others? The answer could be a molecule called Bsx, as scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Institute for Nutrition (DIFE), Potsdam, and the University of Cincinnati report in the current issue of…

New insights into the neural basis of anxiety

Science & Technology People who suffer from anxiety tend to interpret ambiguous situations, situations that could potentially be dangerous but not necessarily so, as threatening. Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy have now uncovered the neural basis for…

The first public nucleotide sequence database turns 25

Lab Matters It was the world’s earliest public database of DNA and RNA sequences and remains Europe’s primary nucleotide sequence resource. The database is maintained by EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton (UK) in collaboration with its US and Japanese counterparts GenBank and…

Mechanism of microRNAs deciphered

Science & Technology Over 30% of our genes are under the control of small molecules called microRNAs. They prevent specific genes from being turned into protein and regulate many crucial processes like cell division and development, but how they do so has remained unclear. Now researchers from the European Molecular…

A matter of force

Science & Technology When a cell divides, normally the result is two identical daughter cells. In some cases however, cell division leads to two cells with different properties. This is called asymmetric cell division and plays an important role in embryonic development and the self-renewal of stem cells. Researchers…

The origin of the brain lies in a worm

Science & Technology The rise of the central nervous system (CNS) in animal evolution has puzzled scientists for centuries. Vertebrates, insects and worms evolved from the same ancestor, but their CNSs are different and were thought to have evolved only after their lineages had split during evolution. Researchers from…

Researchers identify molecular basis of inflammatory bowel disease

Science & Technology Inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis, severely impair the lives of more than four million people worldwide. The development of effective therapies against these diseases requires an understanding of their underlying molecular mechanisms. Researchers from…

An architectural plan of the cell

Science & Technology Like our body every cell has a skeleton that provides it with a shape, confers rigidity and protects its fragile inner workings. The cytoskeleton is built of long protein filaments that assemble into networks whose overall architecture and fine detail can only be revealed with high resolution…

A clearer view on biology

Science & Technology The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has developed a new computational tool that makes images obtained with cutting-edge microscopes even sharper. The technological advance and its applications are published in this week’s online issue of the journal Nature Methods. Since the…

A first glimpse of the influenza replication machine

Science & Technology In 1918, 50 million people died during a worldwide influenza pandemic caused by mutation of a bird-specific strain of the influenza virus. Recently H5N1, another highly infectious avian strain has caused outbreaks of bird flu around the world. There is great concern that this virus might also…

A signal that protects the liver from hepatitis and cancer

Science & Technology Liver cancer is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide; every year sees more than 400,000 new cases, and most of the victims die in less than one year. Despite extensive research, the underlying molecular mechanisms of the disease are poorly understood. A new study by researchers from the Mouse…

Putting an old drug to a new use

Science & Technology We all know that iron deficiencies are dangerous, but also too much iron is bad for our health. Our body stores excess iron in various tissues, where it can lead to organ failure and even death if not treated before irreversible damage has occurred. Researchers from the Innsbruck Medical…

Investigating the invisible life in our environment

Science & Technology Microorganisms make up more than a third of the Earth’s biomass. They are found in water, on land and even in our bodies, recycling nutrients, influencing the planet’s climate or causing diseases. Still, we know surprisingly little about the smallest beings that colonise Earth. A new…

New Facility for Structural Biology to investigate the molecules of life with powerful synchrotron radiation

Lab Matters The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) has awarded 8.8 Million Euro to the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) for the construction of an Integrated Research Facility for Structural Biology at the new PETRA-III storage ring of the German…

EMBL coordinates new Marie Curie Research Training Network “Chromatin Plasticity”

Lab Matters The European Commission has awarded 3.7 Million Euro under the European Union Framework 6 Programme over the next four years to a new Marie Curie Research Training Network, coordinated by Dr. Andreas Ladurner at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). The long molecules of DNA that carry…

UK PubMed Central launched

Lab Matters From today scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research and to submit their own published results for inclusion in a new online resource. Based on a model currently used by the US National Institute of Health, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to a…

Getting to the bottom of memory

Science & Technology Phone numbers, the way to work, granny’s birthday – our brain with its finite number of nerve cells can store incredible amounts of information. At the bottom of memory lies a complex network of molecules. To understand how this network brings about one of the most remarkable capacities of…

Roadworks on the motorways of the cell

Science & Technology A cell is a busy place. In a permanent rush hour, molecules are transported along a dynamic motorway system made up of filaments called microtubules. Microtubules constantly grow and shrink and are rapidly assembled wherever a cargo needs to go, but during this transportation process they need to…

Magna Carta for Researchers

ConnectionsLab Matters Today, Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research, received a statement of support for the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers from EIROforum. “The EIROforum partners warmly welcome this valuable initiative by…

Better, faster, easier

Lab MattersScience & Technology Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) launches its new, faster and easier website with an exhaustive search engine at its centre. The web interface has been streamlined on the basis of user feedback from a recent extensive…

Europe and India join forces to make more biological models available for research

ConnectionsLab Matters The BioModels Database, hosted by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Cambridge, UK, has entered a formal data-exchange agreement with the Database of Quantitative Chemical Signalling (DOQCS) of the National Centre for…

CiteXplore

Lab MattersScience & Technology Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) launches CiteXplore, a new freely accessible literature resource service. Biological researchers require two crucial sources of information: scientific literature published in peerreviewed…

Helping muscle regenerate

Science & Technology Muscle wasting can occur at all ages as the result of genetic defects, heart failure, spinal injury or cancer. A therapy to cure the loss of muscle mass and strength, which has a severe impact on patients’ lives, is desperately sought. Blocking a central signal molecule, researchers from the…

Giving European science a headstart through training

Lab Matters Today, the German Minister for Education and Research, Annette Schavan, breaks ground for the new training and conference centre for the life sciences that will be built on the EMBL campus in Heidelberg. The German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), the Klaus Tschira…

How nature tinkers with the cellular clock

Science & Technology The life of a cell is all about growing and dividing at the right time. That is why the cell cycle is one of the most tightly regulated cellular processes. A control system with several layers adjusts when key components of the cell cycle machinery are produced, activated and degraded to make sure…

New EMBL/CRG Research Unit for Systems Biology launched today

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (MEC) officially launch their new joint EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology on the campus of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. The Spanish…

Lost in the labyrinth

Science & Technology Blood cells have limited lifespans, which means that they must be continually replaced by calling up reserves and turning these into the blood cell types needed by the body. Claus Nerlov and his colleagues at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) unit in Monterotondo, Italy, in…

A wandering eye

Science & Technology Eyes are among the earliest recognisable structures in an embryo; they start off as bulges on the sides of tube-shaped tissue that will eventually become the brain. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now discovered that cells are programmed to make…

A switch between life and death

Science & Technology Cells in an embryo divide at an amazing rate to build a whole body, but this growth needs to be controlled. Otherwise the result may be defects in embryonic development or cancer in adults. Controlling growth requires that some cells divide while others die; their fates are determined by signals…

EMBL scientists found start-up company to develop anti-cancer drugs

Lab MattersScience & Technology Today EMBL scientists, EMBL’s commercial affiliate, EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM) and EMBL’s venture vehicle, EMBL Ventures GmbH, announce the foundation of Elara Pharmaceuticals GmbH, a start-up company that will translate basic research findings into new…

Alleviating the burden of Multiple Sclerosis

Science & Technology Depression, coordination and speech problems, muscle weakness and disability are just a few of the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy and the Department of Neuropathology at the Faculty of…

EMBL-EBI and collaborators win bid to run UK PubMed Central

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research at the touch of a button thanks to a major new initiative that aims to promote the free transfer of ideas in a bid to speed up scientific discovery. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central…

Mapping the protein world

Lab MattersScience & Technology In the early days of X-ray crystallography obtaining a three-dimensional model of a protein required wire models, screws, bolts and years of tedious calculations by hand. Today macromolecular models are built by computers – thanks to sophisticated software and in particular a package called…

Croatia becomes EMBL’s 19th Member State

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Croatia has officially joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) as the organisation’s 19th Member State. The Croatian parliament ratified its membership after EMBL’s council had accepted the country’s application. “Joining EMBL is a very important step…

Cracking a virus protection shield

Science & Technology Ebola, measles and rabies are serious threats to public health in developing countries. Despite different symptoms all of the diseases are caused by the same class of viruses that unlike most other living beings carry their genetic information on a single RNA molecule instead of a double strand of…

New potential drug target in tuberculosis

Science & Technology Tuberculosis remains one of the deadliest threats to public health. Every year two million people die of the disease, which is caused by the microorganism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Roughly one third of the world’s population is infected and more and more bacterial strains have developed…

Free access to world-class biological databases for European science thanks to FELICS

ConnectionsLab Matters Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s (EMBL) European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (SIB), the University of Cologne, Germany, and the European Patent Office launch FELICS (Free European Life-science Information and Computational Services).…

A brighter future for Europe’s favourite molecular biology software package

ConnectionsLab Matters EMBOSS, the European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite, has received a vital funding boost from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) that will guarantee its continued maintenance under an open source license for the next three years. This ends two years of…

Getting to the heart of cardiovascular diseases

ConnectionsLab Matters Today three research organisations announce the merging of their expertise to fight cardiovascular diseases, which are among the most common health problems and causes of death in the world. The Magdi Yacoub Institute (MYI) at the UK’s Harefield Heart Science Centre, Imperial College London,…

With joint forces against Malaria

Connections Today the network of excellence for Biology and Pathology of the Malaria Parasite (BioMalPar), will bring together the world’s elite in the field of Malaria research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. At the second annual BioMalPar conference, organised jointly…

Bringing science out of the lab into the classroom

Lab Matters Science is moving more rapidly than ever; one groundbreaking discovery chases the next at an incredible speed. School teachers have trouble keeping up with the pace, and many pupils call science classes “boring”. Today, Europe’s major research organisations launch Science in…

A balancing act between the sexes

Science & Technology Recent research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) reveals new insights into how cells achieve equality between the sexes. A new link discovered between the membrane surrounding the nucleus and the male X-chromosome in fruit flies may play a crucial role in determining how active…

A new tree of life allows a closer look at the origin of species

Science & Technology In 1870 the German scientist Ernst Haeckel mapped the evolutionary relationships of plants and animals in the first ‘tree of life’. Since then scientists have continuously redrawn and expanded the tree adding microorganisms and using modern molecular data, yet, many parts of the tree…

Waking a sleeping virus

Science & Technology A detailed structural picture of a molecule that plays a key role in activating the Epstein Barr Virus in human cells has now been obtained by researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Institut de Virologie Moléculaire et Structurale (IVMS), associated with the…

The closest look ever at the cell’s machines

Science & Technology Today researchers in Germany announce they have finished the first complete analysis of the “molecular machines” in one of biology’s most important model organisms: S. cerevisiae (baker’s yeast). The study from the biotechnology company Cellzome, in collaboration with the…

The giant protein titin helps build muscles

Science & Technology Imagine grabbing two snakes by the tail so that they can’t wriggle off in opposite directions. Scientists at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and collaborators from King’s College in London have now discovered that something similar happens to a…

A major European Centre for Structural Biology inaugurated in Grenoble

Lab Matters On Friday, 13 January 2006, the new Carl-Ivar Brändén Building (CIBB) will be inaugurated on the Polygone Scientifique Campus in Grenoble, France. The CIBB will be operated as a collaboration between major international and national partners based in Grenoble and is a further step in the…

A key that opens cells to the deadly malaria parasite

Science & Technology Researchers at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in India and a unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in France have made a key discovery about a molecule that helps the malaria parasite infect human cells. India is one of the countries…

Setting the standard for computer models of life

Lab MattersScience & Technology In the December 6 issue of Nature Biotechnology, scientists from 14 different organizations around the world, including the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, propose a new quality standard for biochemical models. MIRIAM [for Minimum information requested in the annotation of biochemical…

The earliest animals had human-like genes

Science & Technology Species evolve at very different rates, and the evolutionary line that produced humans seems to be among the slowest. The result, according to a new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL], is that our species has retained characteristics of a very ancient ancestor…

New high-throughput crystallization facility at EMBL Hamburg to give boost to structural biology community

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) opens a new highthroughput crystallization facility at its Outstation located on the campus of the German Synchrotron Radiation Facility (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. The facility, made possible by major funds from the German Ministry for Science…

Many needles, many haystacks

Science & Technology Most of what happens in cells is the work of machines that contain dozens of molecules, chiefly proteins. With the completion of human and other genomes, researchers now have a nearly complete ‘parts list’ of such machines; what’s lacking is the manual telling where all the pieces…

Limiting the damage in stroke

Science & Technology Scientists at the Universities of Heidelberg and Ulm and a unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy, have discovered that a specific signal within brain cells may determine whether they live or die after a stroke. Their study, published online (November 13) by…

ENFIN! Computational systems biology comes to a lab bench near you

Lab MattersScience & Technology The Commission of the European Union has awarded EUR 9 million over five years for a new Network of Excellence that will make computational systems biology accessible to bench scientists throughout Europe and beyond. ENFIN, which stands for ‘Experimental Network for Functional…

Defusing dangerous mutations

Science & Technology Mutations in genes are the basis of evolution, so we owe our existence to them. Most mutations are harmful, however, because they cause cells to build defective proteins. So cells have evolved quality control mechanisms that recognize and counteract genetic mistakes. Now scientists of the Molecular…

European Commission funds EBI to do new research on synergies between bioinformatics and medical informatics

ConnectionsLab Matters The European Commission has selected the EBI to coordinate a project that will stimulate and explore synergies between bioinformatics (the science of storing, retrieving and analysing large amounts of biological information) and medical informatics (the science of processing, sharing and using…

A new link between stem cells and tumors

Science & Technology Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Parc Científic de Barcelona (IRB-PCB) have now added key evidence to claims that some types of cancer originate with defects in stem cells. The study, reported this week in…

EBI and Ghent University launch PRIDE

ConnectionsLab Matters The European Bioinformatics Institute and Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) – Ghent University have launched the PRoteomics IDEntifications database (PRIDE). PRIDE allows researchers who work in the field of proteomics – the large-scale study of proteins – to…

IMEx consortium provides new mechanism for improving access to molecular interaction data

ConnectionsLab Matters The executive teams of five major molecular interaction databases announced today the signing of an agreement to share curation efforts and exchange completed records through a mechanism known as the International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium. IMEx will provide a network of stable,…

A double punch for female survival

Science & Technology Achieving equality between the sexes can be a challenge even for single cells. Since evolution began removing bits of male DNA to create the ‘Y’ chromosome, males have had a single copy of certain key genes on the X chromosome, whereas females have two. Normally this would lead females…

Public collections of DNA and RNA sequence reach 100 gigabases

ConnectionsLab Matters The world’s three leading public repositories for DNA and RNA sequence information have reached 100 gigabases (100,000,000,000 bases; the ‘letters’ of the genetic code) of sequence. Thanks to their data exchange policy, which has paved the way for the global exchange of many types…

Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit initiates second phase

ConnectionsLab Matters The first rate research from the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU) is now set to continue for the long-term. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Medical Faculty of University of Heidelberg, who formed the joint venture in 2002, have announced their plans to initiate a…

Actin moves chromosomes

Science & Technology Microtubules need a helping hand to find chromosomes in dividing egg cells, scientists have discovered. Although it was generally accepted that microtubules act alone as the cellular ropes to pull chromosomes into place, a new study by researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)…

Hunt for human genes involved in cell division under way

ConnectionsLab Matters A systematic search through human genes has begun at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Working within the MitoCheck consortium that includes 10 other institutes throughout Europe, the EMBL scientists will silence all human genes, one-by-one, to find those…

Trees, vines and nets: microbial evolution changes its face

Science & Technology EBI researchers have changed our view of 4 billion years of microbial evolution. Christos Ouzounis and colleagues have gained intriguing quantitative insights into how gene families are transferred, not only ‘vertically’ through passage from one organism to its progeny, but also…

A link between our body’s energy levels and a protein that wraps our DNA?

Science & Technology Living organisms need to sense the amount of energy that is available to them and regulate the activity of their genes accordingly. Scientists have made the unexpected finding that a histone protein, which wraps DNA into tight bundles and regulates gene activity, can bind a small molecule produced…

EMBL-EBI expansion goes ahead with help from The Wellcome Trust and UK Research Councils

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has received a big boost from The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), who have given funds to expand the EBI site in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK. The new…

EMBL’s fourth Director-General, Dr Iain Mattaj, takes office

EMBL AnnouncementsLab Matters Dr. Iain Mattaj today took over the leadership of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL], a prominent basic research and training institute with laboratories in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. “The pace of progress in the life sciences is remarkable. I see my job as ensuring that…

Whale bones and farm soil: Sequencing biodiversity

Science & Technology Instead of sequencing the genome of one organism, why not sequence a drop of sea water, a gram of farm soil or even a sunken whale skeleton? Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and their US collaborators have done just that, and the result is a new…

A new way to share models of biological systems

Science & Technology Today sees the launch of BioModels, the world’s first database of annotated biological models. BioModels is the result of a collaboration led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (UK) and the SBML Team, an international group that develops opensource standards to describe biological…

The transparent organism

Connections A novel high-tech microscope will be brought to the marketplace, giving laboratories everywhere fascinating new insights into living organisms. EMBLEM Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM), the commercial entity of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), announced today that it has signed a…

Double recognition of EBI scientists by the ISCB

EMBL Announcements The International Society for Computational Biology has named two scientists from the European Bioinformatics Institute as the winners of its awards for 2005. Janet Thornton wins the Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award while the Overton Prize goes to Ewan Birney. Thomas Lengauer, the ISCB’s…

Biology in four dimensions

Science & Technology Most things that happen in the cell are the work of ‘molecular machines’ – complexes of proteins that carry out important cellular functions. Until now, scientists didn’t have a clear idea of when proteins form these machines – are these complexes pre-fabricated or put…

European bioinformatics grid receives 8 million Euro

EMBL Announcements The Commission of the European Union has awarded 8.3 million Euro to a pan-European task force who will improve access to biological information for scientists throughout and beyond Europe. The EMBRACE Network of Excellence, which encompasses computational biologists from 17 institutes in 11…

How do cells travel through our bodies?

Science & Technology One of the most basic yet least understood processes in our bodies is how cells crawl along tissues. This behavior is essential to the formation of an embryo and other processes, but it must be tightly controlled. A disturbance can lead to the spread of cancer cells or diseases like Spina…