Portugal joins Europe's leading bioinformatics research infrastructure

TheELIXIR consortium – European Life-Science Infrastructure for Biological Information – has as its main objective to operationalize and manage large collections of information generated by the life sciences. ELIXIR integrates information from across Europe and makes it available to all scientists in all areas of knowledge, thereby 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 the EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) as a full member. The ELIXIR consortium was recently considered one of the priority infrastructures by the European strategic forum ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) for its potential toadvance scientific excellence, its strategic relevance to Europe, and its readiness for immediate implementation. 

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 research infrastructures that will be included in the first National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures. Being a member of ELIXIR is fully aligned with our goal of ensuring consistency and solid interaction between national infrastructures and their European counterparts, particularly those that are aligned with the ESFRI roadmap.”

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