Established in 2000 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to promote research excellence in the field of plant molecular biology, is located in purpose-built, state-of-the-art premises at the Vienna Biocenter, Vienna, Austria and currently employs 85 researchers from 22 nations. The Vienna Biocenter is a leading multi-disciplinary biomedical research center in Europe and the premier location for life sciences in Austria at which 1700 people from 40 nations are employed. The Vienna Biocenter hosts a broad spectrum of life sciences institutions including the GMI, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna.

The GMI has full access to the outstanding IMP/IMBA/GMI core facilities, which include everything from dish-washing to cutting-edge genomics technology. In addition to these campus-wide facilities, the GMI recently completed constructing a €3 million plant growth facility consisting of 17 state-of-the-art environmental control chambers (a total of over 250 m2 of shelf space), including experimental features such as liquid-cooled LED lighting, which allows temperatures down to -15 degrees C with lights on. All chambers are equipped with automated watering and can be equipped with cameras for high-throughput phenotyping.

The GMI is also well equipped for computational work. In collaboration with the MFPL's CIBIV (Center for Integrative Bioinformatics Vienna), the GMI operates a medium-sized compute cluster, file servers capable of handling high-throughput sequencing data, back-up servers, and general-purpose compute servers.

The Principal Investigator, Dr. Magnus Nordborg, is the Scientific Director of the GMI. He is an international leader in the field of population genetics, and has pioneered GWAS and the use of natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana. He has collaborated extensively, and co-authored 60 research articles, including 3 in Science, 2 in Nature, and 2 in Nature Genetics.

Selected publications:
Nordborg, M., et al. (2002) The extent of linkage disequilibrium in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nat. Genet. 30, 190-193.
Clark, R. M., et al. (2007) Common sequence polymorphisms shaping genetic diversity in Arabidopsis thaliana. Science 317, 338-342.
Kim, S., et al. (2007) Recombination and linkage disequilibrium in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nat. Genet. 39, 1151-1155.
Tang, C., et al. (2007) The evolution of selfing in Arabidopsis thaliana. Science 317, 1070-1072.
Atwell, S., et al. (2010) Genome-wide association study of 107 phenotypes in a common set of Arabidopsis thaliana inbred lines. Nature 465, 627-631.