ELIXIR-EXCELERATE: establishing Europe's data infrastructure for the life science research of the future

Abstract

A new inter-governmental research infrastructure, ELIXIR, aims to unify bioinformatics resources and life science data across Europe, thereby facilitating their mining and (re-)use.

Figure 1. Development of ELIXIR as Europe's life science data infrastructure.

Schematic overview of the establishment of ELIXIR, including the ELIXIR‐EXCELERATE achievements, a timeline of when members joined and an overview of Use Cases established during the launch of the ELIXIR‐EXCELERATE grant.

Figure 2. Federated access to European Genomes

On the left, 17 of the 23 Nodes are members of the ELIXIR Federated Human Data Community. EMBL‐EBI (Cambridge, UK) and CRG (Barcelona, Spain) are specifically highlighted as these are the host institutes of the central EGA. Five Federated EGA deploying Nodes (Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden) are also highlighted. These implemented the Federated EGA framework in the first wave to manage archival, access and analysis of sensitive human data. On the right, a schematic view of the ELIXIR Finland Federated EGA deployment. Sensitive human data generated at laboratories, BioBanks and hospitals, and/or by individual projects and submitters, are stored in encrypted format within the countries’ jurisdiction. These sensitive data never leave the Finnish borders. Metadata to describe the datasets is shared with the central EGA, which enables findability of these data. Authorised users are able to access these sensitive data remotely thanks to the suite of interoperable GA4GH standards.