Instruct-ERIC in EOSC-Life: A Summary

The EOSC-Life project brought together 13 Life Science RIs to create an open, digital and collaborative space for data resources and data processing workflows in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Find out more about Instruct’s wider EOSC activities here.

One aim of the EOSC-Life project was to support innovative projects that would promote the development of an open digital space for the life sciences. To this end, a series of open calls were organised to select and support pilot projects that would develop solutions for the FAIR handling of data resources in the life sciences. 7 projects involving 7 Instruct Centres were selected and benefited from EOSC-life financial and technical support.

The Instruct projects conducted with EOSC-Life support are:

• Development of the Fragalysis platform for fragment-based drug discovery – Diamond Light Source
  https://fragalysis.diamond.ac.uk/viewer/ ; https://www.eosc-life.eu/d1/
• Increasing the FAIRness of data and image processing workflows in Cryo-EM (2 projects) – CNB-CSIC, CEITEC
  https://github.com/scipion-em/scipion-em-empiar ; https://www.eosc-life.eu/d2/
• Development of ICEBEAR: Macromolecular crystallography data management in the cloud – University of Oulu, Weizmann Institute of Science, Diamond Light Source http://www.icebear.fi/
• Development and refinement of PDB-REDO Cloud for FAIR protein structures (2 projects) – NKI
  https://pdb-redo.eu/
• Towards FAIR data for X ray-based structure-guided drug design – EMBL Grenoble
  https://mmcif.wwpdb.org/

CERM/CIRMMP, part of Instruct-IT, was involved in a Work Package focusing on the development of solution for the handling of tools and workflows. This work has united the life science community with new solutions such as the WorkflowHub a powerful registry for describing, sharing and publishing scientific workflows.

Instruct partners and EOSC-Life have also teamed up to support and deliver training programmes. Training activities focused on: 1) data validation and fairness in cryo-EM delivered by CNB-CSIC in Instruct-ES; 2) remote access and remote training organised by Instruct and Euro-BioImaging with the participation of several Instruct Centres.

In addition, cloud deployment and further development of key software such as ARIA in the Instruct Hub and Proteopedia in Instruct-IL were supported by EOSC-life. ARIA has been continuously developed as part of EOSC Life and is now a key software tool for research infrastructures. ARIA updated its login system, allowing researchers to create an ARIA account using their LS Login credentials.

The EOSC is an important consideration for all researchers, ensuring that data and workflows are produced, stored, and shared in the correct way. As the research infrastructure for structural biology, Instruct’s cooperation with EOSC-Life has allowed to promote and support the transition towards better data management in the field of Structural Biology and beyond.