Bioinformatics in Belgium is becoming increasingly established. As a result, more initiatives to build infrastructure and to stimulate collaboration are being initiated and will be integrated to strengthen the Belgian ELIXIR Node. Research fields of particular interest to the Belgian ELIXIR Node are plant research and the biomedical sciences.
Regarding plant research and sustainable agriculture, Belgium has an impressive number of R&D driven biotech companies that collaborate with academic institutes and research centres. This has led to numerous important plant genomics resources, unique data mining and biostatistical tools and databases for plant molecular biology with applications in sustainable agriculture.
Regarding health, the clinical genomics community in Belgium has developed specific infrastructure to generate and handle next-generation sequencing data for diagnostic and research purposes. The ensuing databases of genomic sequence data and clinical diagnostic data are of great value for biomedical research.