ELIXIR – Projects to Advance Open Science

In two priority areas (“Cellular and molecular research” and “Biodiversity, food security and pathogens”), eight projects have been selected with the aim of strengthening open science and supporting FAIR practices in the life sciences. The projects will start in 2026. The successful projects are:

Biodiversity, food security and pathogens

• BioDiv-FAIR-Checker: Raising FAIRness of European biodiversity data through ELIXIR-aligned standards, services and training 
  ELIXIR Nodes: France, Switzerland, UK
  Community: Biodiversity
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • Biodiversity-specific FAIR assessment metrics and remediation guidance.
    • Pilots for genomics, specimen and ecological datasets.
    • Improved dataset interoperability and discoverability.
    • Training workshops and TeSS resources to support adoption.
    • Enhanced indexing in aggregators such as EOSC Search & Discovery and OpenAIRE.
• Building FAIR metadata standards for non-human pathogen genomic and phenotypic data 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland
  Community: Research Data Management
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • FAIR metadata standard for non-human pathogen genomic and phenotypic data.
    • Human- and machine-readable templates with clear implementation guidance.
    • Pilot submissions to ENA, BioSamples and BioStudies.
    • Open training materials (TeSS/Zenodo).
    • Sustainability and adoption plan across ELIXIR Nodes.
• Creation of a virtual assistant guiding plant researchers in making their datasets FAIR compliant 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Belgium, Germany, Netherlands
  Communities: Plant Science, Research Data Management
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • Conversational AI service for extracting structured metadata.
    • MetaBuddy web app and integration into ISA Wizard.
    • Standards-compliant metadata outputs (ISA-JSON, RO-Crate).
    • Improved metadata quality for plant phenotyping datasets.
    • Sustainable, open-source software for long-term community use.

• FAIRferm: FAIRifying microbiome–metabolome time-series data from food fermentation processes 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland
  Communities: Food and Nutrition, Microbiome
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • Harmonised metadata standards for multi-omics time-series datasets.
    • FAIRified datasets submitted to ENA/MGnify and MetaboLights and linked via BioSamples.
    • FAIR-compliant pipelines for microbiome–metabolome temporal analysis.
    • Modular training resources and community uptake.
    • Integrated cross-platform resource via dbNP enabling dynamic analysis and reproducible research.
• KYBELE: Knowledge Yield from Biodiversity Literature through Large Language Model (LLM) Extraction 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Greece, Italy, Switzerland
  Communities: Biodiversity, Research Data Management
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • FAIR-aligned catalogues of species, traits and habitats.
    • Annotated BiodiversityPMC enriched with domain vocabularies.
    • Public LLM-powered biodiversity literature exploration service.
    • Containerised extraction workflows integrated with ELIXIR/LifeWatch ERIC.
    • FAIR training materials and documentation for adoption.

Cellular and molecular research

• FAIR annotation workflows for PDBe-KB via community-driven Nextflow development and training 
  ELIXIR Nodes: EMBL-EBI, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK
  Communities: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, Proteomics
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • Containerised Nextflow modules created and documented.
    • Reproducible workflows integrated into PDBe-KB.
    • Training materials, contributor guidelines and TeSS resources.
    • Four hackathon-linked manuscripts plus an overarching community report.
    • Five-year roadmap for future structural annotation needs.
• FRET-IDP Community Resource: Integrating and standardising FRET data for disordered proteins 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Portugal, Hungary
  Community: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • Central, FAIR-compliant public registry for IDP-FRET datasets.
    • MIADE-FRET community reporting standard.
    • Enhanced reproducibility and cross-study comparability.
    • etc.
• TELLME: LLM-based narratives to explain and empower systems biology research 
  ELIXIR Nodes: Spain, Netherlands, UK
  Communities: Single-Cell Omics, Systems Biology
  • Predicted outcomes:
    • AI-driven, citation-rich narrative explanations of systems biology and multi-omics models
    • Containerised, open-source service registered in bio.tools and compatible with Galaxy
    • Integration with Europe PMC, Ensembl, Reactome, MetaboLights, OpenTargets
    • etc.

Last updated on December 8, 2025