SWISS BIOINFORMATICS

How to turn Big Data into clinically relevant knowledge: this hot topic was discussed during our conference [BC]², one of the key bioinformatics events of the year. Take a glimpse of the atmosphere, topics discussed and impressions from SIB Scientists, keynote speakers, SIB Bioinformatics Awards laureates and others...

Discover SIB’s vision on what is needed to guarantee the generation of, access to, and maintenance of scientific knowledge in the long-term and for the benefit of all. Harmonizing licenses of databases and tools, expertly curating the information they contain, looking into sustainable funding schemes… A video produced as part of the Swiss Open Science Action Plan Kick-Off Forum hosted by swissuniversities.

SIB and Life Sciences Switzerland (LS²) have joined in 2019 to form a “Bioinformatics intersection”. Its mission: promote exchanges and bridge activities between SIB Members and the LS² community, as well as accelerate the development of methods and tools supporting experimental developments. Join its first symposium, co-organized with the Microscopy Intersection, on “Smart Microscopy: machine learning applied to life sciences” at the LS² Annual Meeting.

Genetic profile, mutations, molecular modelling… Why not take a few minutes to explore PrecisionMed.ch (EN/FR), a new treasure trove to understand the basis of precision medicine, with concrete examples, illustrations and videos. The PrecisionMed.ch website was developed by SIB in collaboration with the University of Lausanne and the CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital), with the support of the SantéPerSo initiative.

Bioinformatics databases hold vast amounts of knowledge that can be retrieved with in-depth technical know-how. A recent study, powered by the BioSODA project - a collaboration between the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and several SIB Groups - now enables easy access to the wealth of complementary information contained in several SIB Resources through editable template queries in natural language. Users can now retrieve, within seconds, human genes associated with cancer (UniProtKB) for which orthologs existed in the rat (OMA) and corresponding genes expressed in the rat brain (Bgee).

A new resource for microbiologists working on toxin-antitoxin systems (by Hatice Akarsu Egger, Fribourg), a one-stop shop for orthologs (by Natasha Glover, Lausanne) and how the SIB Resources OrthoDB and BUSCO were used to uncover the origin of beetles’ biodiversity (by Robert Waterhouse, Lausanne): three new online talks to discover!

SIB Researchers from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, led by Group Leader Olivier Delaneau, have developed a powerful computer algorithm that allows the haplotypes of hundreds of thousands of unrelated individuals to be identified very quickly. Their tool is now available online under an open source license…

Two recent papers, co-led by SIB Group Leader Robert Waterhouse unravel arthropod genomic diversity over 500 million years of evolution as part of a global arthropods sequencing initiative (Genome Biology); and propose to improve genome assemblies using genome-comparison-based evolutionary approaches, as tested on mosquito genomes (BMC Biology).

A brand-new year, with a brand-new list of SIB courses. Save the date for your favorite courses on SIB resources and several bioinformatics topics such as: glycobioinformatics, single-cell RNA-seq, neXtProt, UniProt, drug design, statistics, programming, comparative genomics… Many other courses will be added up along the year. Subscribe to the mailing list to be notified when registrations for courses open and don’t hesitate to share this information with your colleagues!

Toxic compounds that find their way into microorganisms are usually funneled out by what are known as efflux pumps. These pumps pose one problem for humans however, and that is drug resistance. One such pump is the Trichophyton rubrum ABC multidrug transporter MDR3.