Tag: alan bridge group

“What drives me is that we share a common goal: to provide the most accurate and up-to-date open knowledge to support research.” Meet Elisabeth Coudert, at SIB since 2000, who is leading the Annotation Enhancements team in the Swiss-Prot Group....

A major step ensuring sustainability of Swiss-made biodata resources.

Discover a library of interactive cell images for the visualization of subcellular location data.

Focus on the group's mission The Swiss-Prot team excels in the art of generating machine-readable knowledge of biology from the ever growing body of scientific publications. It is harnessing the power of deep learning to accelerate literature...

Today marks the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s famous work ‘On the Origin of Species’, published on 24 November 1859. And how best to celebrate evolutionary biology than through stories showing some of the real-life implications...

How to popularize evolution and phylogenetics? The new project “In the light of evolution” aims to foster greater public interest as well as a practical understanding of this fundamental but rather abstract theme.

Two further resources developed by SIB Groups have been designated as of crucial importance for life sciences, as a result of the latest edition of the selection process led by ELIXIR at the European level: Cellosaurus and Rhea.

How is machine learning and deep learning used across bioinformatics? Do all ML models necessarily need to be explainable? How can trust from end-users of ML powered applications be fostered?

The Swiss Variant Interpretation Platform for Oncology (SVIP-O) was launched by SIB, ETH Zurich and HES-SO to offer a harmonized interpretation of cancer variants to clinicians. SVIP-O, now available in its first public version,

A new version of ChromosomeWalk offers a gateway to an entertaining ‘genome browser’, enriched with a new selection of stories on fascinating genes – in English, French and German – as well to the PrecisionMed website for an illustrated tour of...

A new workshop for classrooms offers the opportunity to discover the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, in particular its genome and proteins. These materials result from a partnership between SIB and the University of Lausanne (SCMS).

One particular AMP from the venom of a tropical wasp, Polybia paulista, appears not only to present anti-cancer properties but also to fight off an infection known as Chagas disease which affects millions of people every year and worldwide. Its...

Cryptococcus neoformans is a fungal pathogen which infects cells by using the copper it finds in them for its own metabolism, while the host retaliates by raising the concentration of metal to create a toxic environment for the pathogen. In...

Read how the ZBP1 protein comes into action when cells are undergoing stress in a viral infection for example, but is also associated with the onset and progression of certain cancers, as well as several autoimmune diseases.

Discover the role tiny entities such as proteins play in the grand scheme of things – from smells to diseases – through an inspired dialogue between a biologist and a non-specialist.

A protein that has been coined HMCES, which is found throughout the three domains of life, and even in certain viruses it seems, can repair damage on single-stranded DNA.

One particular fungus, Armillaria gallica, created a buzz in the 1990s when scientists announced that they had found a colony whose rhizomorphs seemingly stretched over tens of acres. However, as rhizomorphs grow, they also spend a lot of time...

For shoots to appear along the length of a rose's stem, besides light, sugars are required in huge quantities and, for this, many enzymes are triggered into action. In the common modern rose, Rosa hybrida, one such enzyme is a vacuolar invertase -...

Viruses need to get inside cells in order to multiply, and this is what brings on infection. Viruses recognise molecules on the surface of cells to which they bind, thus enabling them - or parts of them - to enter the host cells where they rapidly...

When too much uric acid is produced, it precipitates as urate crystals that slowly build up finally causing excruciating pain - surprisingly at the base of the big toe in about half of gout cases. Why is uric acid elimination sometimes...

From where did the new coronavirus (nCoV, see box) arise, and how did it move to humans? How is it spreading and evolving? How can we develop therapies to treat it? SIB Groups provide a range of tools and resources that can help researchers answer...

Toxic compounds that find their way into microorganisms are usually funnelled 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...

One promising attempt to shift A, B and AB blood types to the 'universal' O blood type involves bacteria from our gut microbiome, and two enzymes: a D-galactosamine deacetylase and a D-galactosamine galactosaminidase.

Understanding how pain occurs on the molecular plane helps scientists find ways of designing pain relievers. However, more often than not, pain is usually accompanied by swelling which has a protective role. So we face a conundrum: how do you...

A plant pathogen known as Phytophthora sojae uses a lure to confound soybean's immune response to infection.

Magnetotactic bacteria have learned to use the Earth's magnetic field as a speedy highway to travel to nutrients of interest. They do this by way of minute iron-rich pouches - or magnetosomes - that are aligned along their middle and act much like...

Because of their inability to move, plants have devised the most elaborate ways of deceiving their environment in order to grow. European maize, for example, is able to synthesize a molecule known as (E)-β-caryophyllene which is released by...

SIB Group Leader Frédérique Lisacek, glycoinformatician, and Philippe Le Mercier, molecular virologist, present a dynamic view of their recent joint paper on this topic and provide a tour d’horizon of the tools developed at SIB that can be used to...

In cells, special enzymes - of which there are many - have the task of adding or removing molecules onto or from proteins to this end. One of these is SET domain protein 3, or SETD3 which shifts the behaviour of a certain kind of actin...

Life strives on reproduction. Over time, it has found very imaginative ways to proliferate in multitudinous forms - from protozoa wriggling in the bottom of pools to big cats racing across the African plains and birds flying swiftly through the...

Would Nature not tend instinctively towards symmetry? In our eyes, symmetry often spells equilibrium, a source of beauty. Consider the work of architects, or engineers. Houses, skyscrapers, bridges and dams are usually symmetric which is not only,...

We are all bound to become prey, predator or competitor one day. Whichever way you look at it. That is why, over time, all living beings have acquired their very own palette of defence mechanisms. Roses grow thorns. Bacteria fire toxins...

There are many proteins crouching in the recesses of databanks whose role in vivo eludes researchers. Despite similarities of all kinds they may share with other proteins, they seem to have been designed for another purpose...

Though it may seem a paradox, life is riddled with barriers. This is because it is sometimes necessary to create dead ends to keep things at a healthy distance. Obstructions of this kind exist at all levels of living matter...

No one likes the cold. Humans wear scarves, fur boots, quilted coats and woollen hats to keep the harshness of winter out while other creatures grow their own fur or line their bodies with a thick layer of blubber...

Integrating biological and chemical knowledge for a more complete understanding of biological systems – and better links between SIB and ELIXIR Core Data Resources.

Movement is what sustains life. Organisms need to move to find food, seek shelter and to reproduce. Mobility is also essential inside organisms where cells are continuously dividing and migrating. There is also unceasing movement inside every cell...

Last week, we announced a series of communications highlighting SIB’s development axes for the years to come. Leveraging the biocuration expertise of the Institute in the context of personalized health is one of them...

Left only to the passage of time, everything gravitates towards chaos. Gardens become overgrown. Roads gather potholes and cracks. Relationships wither, and teeth rot. We have ways of dealing with this however.

Life is a continuous balance between what needs to remain, and what must disappear. We are not aware of it but our bodies unceasingly shed cells that have received orders to die, which is a necessary process if tissues are to be renewed or to stay...

Being able to redistribute or reuse parts of scientific knowledge, such as information encoded in biological databases, is an essential driver of innovation. Today, UniProt adopts the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license to encourage the creation of...

It has happened to all of us. You are seated in a good restaurant and the waiter has just brought you the wine you ordered. He solemnly shows you the label. You nod, and he proceeds to slit open the lead seal with the tip of his corkscrew.

To ensure the preservation of life science knowledge on the long term, innovative funding models for knowledgebases such as UniProt must be found. SIB conducted a study addressing this very topic...

Time runs its treacherous fingers along everything. The smoothed edges of a pebble. The polished wood of a staircase. The worn joints in our bones. Sometimes, even, the erosion of our memory. Every day, every hour, every minute, we get a little...

Multitasking is not limited to computers. On a day-to-day basis, humans frequently deal with more than one thing at a time - for the sake of speed, convenience and no doubt productivity.

One cell. One organism. One fate: male, or female. The way Nature designs things, you would expect traits as fundamental as those that make a boy a boy or a girl a girl, for instance, to be inscribed in their respective DNA from the very start.

Nature tiptoes along a sturdy yet fragile tightrope. DNA is its backbone and provides a basis from which every single living species on this planet emerges and prospers. Time, however, tampers with everything. Silver turns black. Fruit rots. And...

The recent study addressing funding concerns for knowledgebases, conducted by SIB and supported by ELIXIR, is the focus of an F1000 Research blog.

There will always be more to Nature than meets the eye. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the importance of RNA in protein synthesis gradually emerged. RNA has always been seen as a linear molecule, a bit like a sentence which has a beginning and an...

Science has its backlashes. Consider nuclear fission, or the drug thalidomide. Psilocybin is also a discovery that brought trouble with it - though of a very different and milder kind. Psilocybin is none other than the magic referred to in "magic...