OP-NARE131204 18.25

• Main Authors: Catherine Brooksbank, Mary Todd Bergman, Rolf Apweiler, Ewan Birney, Janet Thornton
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Endeavour; Faroe Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1035.1863; http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid%3DPMC3964968%26blobtype%3Dpdf

ABSTRACT Molecular Biology has been at the heart of the 'big data' revolution from its very beginning, and the need for access to biological data is a common thread running from the 1965 publication of Dayhoff's 'Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure' through the Human Genome Project in the late 1990s and early 2000s to today's population-scale sequencing initiatives. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI; http://www.ebi. ac.uk) is one of three organizations worldwide that provides free access to comprehensive, integrated molecular data sets. Here, we summarize the principles underpinning the development of these public resources and provide an overview of EMBL-EBI's database collection to complement the reviews of individual databases provided elsewhere in this issue. INTRODUCTION The molecular life sciences are becoming increasingly datadriven and reliant on open-access databases (1). This is as true of the applied sciences as it is of fundamental research: in the past year, we have witnessed announcements that the UK's National Health Service will invest in sequencing the genomes of up to 100 000 citizens (see http://www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/strategy-for-uk-life-sciences-one-yearon and http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2012/12/u.k.-unveils-plan-sequence-whole-genomes-100000-patients); the Faroe Islands are planning to sequence the genome of every citizen who wishes to have this information (see http://www.fargen.fo/en/), and large-scale metagenomics projects are helping us to map the global biodiversity of the oceans (2). The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, makes these large-scale efforts possible. It helps scientists deposit their research data into public collections, produces value-added knowledge bases and makes its entire holdings accessible to all, thereby enabling millions of scientists worldwide to explore, analyse, interpret and derive new knowledge from decades of scientific endeavour. Among its other roles ...