The first institute for agronomical research in Europe and the second worldwide. INRA develops finalized researches for food, agriculture, and environment.

The Research Unit in Genomics and Bioinformatics (Unité de Recherche Génomique Info -URGI) is an INRA bioinformatics laboratory dedicated to plant and crops parasites genomics. The URGI research activity studies, through “omics” data integration, genome dynamics from functional and evolutionary perspectives URGI hosts a major international bioinformatics platform in plant sciences. It has been recognized as an IBISA platform (French government label) and considered by INRA as "Strategic Platform" (label CNOC from INRA). It also belongs to ReNaBi, the French national network of bioinformatic platforms. Services offered by URGI platform cover database design, software engineering, software hosting, data integration, genomics annotation support and support to bioinformatics analysis.

Interest in the project:
The URGI platform develops and maintains a modular and interoperable Information System for plant and pest genomics called GnpIS (URL: http://urgi.versailles.inra.fr/gnpis). It is a powerful multispecies centralized information system with 7 linked relational databases (GnpMap, GnpSnp, GnpArray, GnpSnp, Siregal, GnpSeq, GnpGenome and Ephesis). It is designed to bridge genetic and genomic data, allowing researchers to cross genetic information (i.e. QTL, markers, SNPs, germplasms, genotypes, phenotypes) with genomic data (i.e. physical maps, genome annotation, expression data) for species of agronomical interest. The system manages data exchange with data producers providing automatic processes for data submission and insertion. The system is used as an international repository for data from INRA, the Genoplante program (A French national initiative for plant sciences), the grapevine for the grape international genome consortium, and the wheat genome for the European triticeae consortium. The system through this project will be enhanced and made interoperable with other similar infrastructures.

Selected References:
The Ectocarpus genome and the independent evolution of multicellularity in brown algae. Nature. 2010 Jun 3;465(7298):617-21. Cock JM et al.
Périgord black truffle genome uncovers evolutionary origins and mechanisms of symbiosis. Nature. 2010 Apr 15;464(7291):1033-8 Martin F et al.
Genome Sequence of the Pea Aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum. PLoS Biol 8(2): e1000313. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000313 The International Aphid Genomics Consortium (2010)
A physical map of the 1-gigabase bread wheat chromosome 3B. Science. 2008 Oct 3;322(5898):101-4. Paux E et al.
The grapevine genome sequence suggests ancestral hexaploidization in major angiosperm phyla. Nature. 2007 Sep 27;449(7161):463-7. Epub 2007 Aug 26.PMID: 17721507. Jaillon O et al.