YAFSE – train your beady eye on EB-eye

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) this week launched its new website. Apparently, the web interface has been streamlined on the basis of user feedback. Nothing too exciting in that, except they have also upgraded their search engine and describe it as being at the centre of the site and exhaustive in its breadth.

Underpinning the new site is “EB-eye”, a trendy-sounding and powerful search engine allowing instant searches of all the EBI’s databases from a single query. “If you can use Google you can use this,” explains associate directory Graham Cameron, latching on to the “proper-verb” of the day.

Seriously though, the new site architecture should allow much swifter navigation between databases, so that you can get from genomes to genes, proteins to structures and biological functions from a single, simple interface.

Intriguingly for an organisation that goes by the monicker of EMBL-EBI acronyms (and jargo, allegedly) have been banished from the site wherever possible. You’re unlikely to hear scientists say, “I’ve just EB-eye’d it,” just yet. But, it might make more sense for specialists to do just that rather than “Googling” for their information needs.