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Bridging artificial intelligence and the life sciences – launch of ELLIS Heidelberg
A newly established research unit will support artificial intelligence and machine learning in the life sciences, and will link its activities in Heidelberg with other research institutes internationally. The unit is part of ELLIS – the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems – and will enable substantial progress in data analysis in medicine and the life sciences. ELLIS Heidelberg was founded by scientists from the German Cancer Research Center, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, and Heidelberg University. Researchers from all life science disciplines – from fundamental biological research to medical applications – generate immense datasets. Analysing these datasets and gaining new knowledge from them is a growing challenge for…
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Life sciences open their doors for engineers
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory has secured 6.8 million Euros funding from the European Commission to launch a unique training programme. The ARISE Programme will train and develop Europe’s next generation leadership for research infrastructures in the life sciences. Research infrastructures are increasingly important to research and development activity by providing access to the latest detection, imaging, computational and research techniques at scale. Maintaining and improving these infrastructures requires interdisciplinary skills bridging science, engineering, service provision and management, that are not usually provided by traditional training programmes in academia or industry. “During the last years we noticed an increasing need to train more engineers, physicists and other technology experts to become…
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New insights into epigenetic modifications
Scientists at EMBL Rome unveil the mechanism behind the most studied epigenetic modification. The press release including visuals can be found here: https://www.embl.org/news/science/new-insights-into-epigenetic-modifications/ ‘DNA makes RNA makes protein’ is a fundamental principle in molecular biology. The process of gene expression, namely creating RNA from a specific DNA sequence, is tightly regulated in different ways. The DNA itself carries a reversible chemical modification – called methylation – that can influence gene expression. Scientists at EMBL Rome, in collaboration with Tim Bestor at Columbia University in New York and John Edwards at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, now show for the first time how DNA methylation instructs cells to repress parts of…
