Portugal joins Europe's leading bioinformatics research infrastructure

The ELIXIR consortium - European Life-Science Infrastrucutre for Biological Information - aims to operationalize and manage large collections of information generated by the life sciences. ELIXIR integrates information from all over Europe and makes it available to all scientists, in all areas of knowledge, thus contributing to new discoveries and advances in key areas such as medicine, agriculture, biotechnology and the environment.

Portugal has now become the 10th country to sign the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement. It joins the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and EMBL(European Molecular Biology Laboratory) as a full member. The ELIXIR consortium was recently considered one of the priority infrastructures by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), due to its potential to advance scientific excellence, its strategic relevance for Europe, and the fact that it can be implemented immediately. 

Being a member country of the ELIXIR infrastructure puts the Portuguese node, and the entire national scientific community, in a privileged position to benefit from the ELIXIR network, particularly in areas of strategic interest to Portugal, such as health, natural resources and the sea. 

Miguel Seabra, President of FCT, comments, "We have recently completed the selection of the research infrastructures that will be part of the first National Roadmap of Research Infrastructures. Being a member of ELIXIR is fully in line with our goal of ensuring coherence and solid interaction between national infrastructures and their European counterparts, particularly those aligned with the ESFRI roadmap."

ELIXIR Director Niklas Blomberg is delighted that Portugal has joined the consortium, "The knowledge and expertise of Portugal's scientific community in plant bioinformatics will undoubtedly be of great benefit to the whole consortium and to research in Europe. We look forward to working closely with the community in the coming years."