欧洲生物信息学中心The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) http://www.ebi.ac.uk
EBI(欧洲生物信息学中心)全称是European Bioinformatics Institute，是一个非盈利性的学术机构，是欧洲分子生物学实验室（EMBL，全称是European Molecular Biology Laboratory）的一部分。它的主要任务是建立、维护和提供生物学数据库以及信息学服务，从而支持生物学数据的存放和进一步挖掘。EMBL全称是欧洲分子生物学实验室,位于德国海德尔堡,是世界上著名的生命科学研究机构。
目前主要拥有的数据库分为六大类：
数据库浏览器和登陆检索工具、文献数据库、生物芯片数据库、核酸数据库、蛋白质数据库和结构数据库。
数据库浏览器和登陆检索工具：EBI发展了多种工具用于浏览和检索生物学相关序列和文献。其中SRS(序列检索系统)是最为强大的浏览/检索工具。SRS为用户提供了快速、便捷和友好的界面以搜索超过400个局域和公众数据库中大量不同种类的生命科学类数据。
EMBL核酸序列数据库也被称作EMBL银行，是欧洲最重要的核酸序列资源，其DNA和RNA的主要信息来源于单独的研究者、基因组测序计划和应用专利等。该数据库与美国NCBI的GenBank和日本的DNA数据库（DDBJ）有着国际性的合作，这三大数据库各自收录了世界上所报道的所有序列数据的一部分，并且每天三大数据库之间会交换数据以实时更新各自的序列信息。
用户可以通过输入序列号来获得EMBL记录。
The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is a non-profit academic organisation that forms part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Our EBI in a Nutshellbrochure provides essential background information on the EBI and presents overviews of our activities in each of our mission areas.
The EBI is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics. The Institute manages databases of biological data including nucleic acid, protein sequences and macromolecular structures.
As we move towards understanding biology at the systems level, access to large data sets of many different types has become crucial. Technologies such as genome-sequencing, microarrays, proteomics and structural genomics have provided ‘parts lists’ for many living organisms, and researchers are now focusing on how the individual components fit together to build systems. The hope is that scientists will be able to translate their new insights into improving the quality of life for everyone. However, the high-throughput revolution also threatens to drown us in data. There is an ongoing, and growing, need to collect, store and curate all this information in ways that allow its efficient retrieval and exploitation. The European Bioinformatics Institute is one of the few places in the world that has the resources and expertise to fulfil this important task. To view our highlights from over the past year, see our latest
Annual Report.
The EMBL-EBI lies in the 55 acres of landscaped parkland in rural Cambridgeshire that make up the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus. The Campus also houses the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, making it one of the world's largest concentrations of expertise in genomics and bioinformatics. The EMBL-EBI grew out of EMBL's pioneering work to provide public biological databases to the research community (seeHistory). Although we are geographically separated from EMBL's main headquarters in Heidelberg and its other sites in Grenoble, Hamburg and Monterotondo, the EMBL-EBI is an integral part of EMBL. We play a vital role in achieving EMBL's mission of providing a top-quality research environment that also develops new technologies, and provides services and training to Europe's molecular life scientists. Like the other EMBL sites, we have an extremely cosmopolitan staff base, and alumni who have moved on to successful careers all over the world.