UniProt release 14.3

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics celebrates its 10th anniversary

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, one of the 3 founder members of the UniProt Consortium, was established 10 years ago, on 30th March 1998, thanks to the enthusiasm and dedication of a small number of outstanding Swiss scientists. In these past 10 years, the SIB has evolved into a federation of 25 research and service groups based in 5 locations in Switzerland: Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich. It comprises a total of close to 300 members affiliated to the best universities and institutes of Switzerland.

The SIB has 3 main missions: research, services and training. It develops and maintains databases, such as UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot (in collaboration with the EBI and PIR), PROSITE, SWISS-2DPAGE, CleanEx, SWISS-MODEL Repository and STRING (in collaboration with the EMBL). It also creates and supplies software for the global life science research community, such as Melanie, MSight and SWISS-MODEL. It manages several bioinformatics core facilities that provide informatics and statistical support, services or advice to life scientists, thus enabling them to conduct their research projects and analyse the resulting data. The SIB is also responsible for a number of bioinformatics courses, which are part of the undergraduate curriculum of Swiss universities, as well as a Doctoral School open to graduate students.

The SIB 10th anniversary was celebrated during the whole year with various events throughout Switzerland, such as conferences and exhibitions for the public at large. However a landmark was reached on September 24th with a one-day conference, followed by a gala dinner peppered with music and speeches. Last, but not least, Zoltán Kutalik has been awarded the first annual SIB Young Bioinformatician Award. The award is for the "Ping Pong" code, published in Nature Biotechnology (May 2008), which allows to virtually check human cell lines for their sensitivity to thousands of drugs.

Happy anniversary SIB and many happy returns!