Bioinformatics hub gets cash infusion

The European Bioinformatics Institute recently got a big data storage boost--$16.6 million worth--from the British Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The funding will aid the Institute's European life-science infrastructure for biological information (ELIXIR) project.

The U.K.-based EBI, part of the Germany-based European Molecular Biology Lab, is slated to become the ELIXIR hub. The funding will allow EBI to develop its data resources and IT infrastructure, which will require adaptable, large-scale storage systems to accommodate the high-throughput methods of genome sequencing. Supercomputing and grid technologies will be part of the environment for data captured from thousands of European labs, according to an announcement. Ease of access and indefinite storage of the biological data generated throughout Europe are goals of the effort.

ELIXIR, initially funded with $6.6 million through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), was set up to address the lack of stable funding for Europe's scientific data resources, such as original genomic data.

- here's the announcement