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About Expasy

Last updated: April 16, 2025

Scope

Expasy is the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics registry of bioinformatics software tools, database/knowledgebase resources, and data sets developed by SIB members. It provides detailed information about software tools, databases and data sets that support a range of life science and clinical research domains, from genomics, proteomics and structural biology, to evolution and phylogeny, systems biology and medical chemistry.

Brief history

Expasy was created in August 1993, at the dawn of the internet era, by two SIB-cofounders Ron Appel and Amos Bairoch. At the time, it was referred to as 'ExPASy, the Expert Protein Analysis System' as proteins were its primary focus. It was the first life science website - and among the 150 very first websites in the world!

In June 2011, it became the SIB Expasy Bioformatics Resources Portal, a catalogue of bioinformatics resources developed by SIB Groups.

The current version, Expasy 3.0, was released in October 2020, following a massive user study and taking into account design, user experience and architecture aspects.

License

The registry content is freely available to all under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0).

How to cite us

Séverine Duvaud, Chiara Gabella, Frédérique Lisacek, Heinz Stockinger, Vassilios Ioannidis, Christine Durinx. Expasy, the Swiss Bioinformatics Resource Portal, as designed by its users
Nucleic Acids Research, 2021. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkab225

Publications

  • Artimo P, Jonnalagedda M, Arnold K, Baratin D, Csardi G, de Castro E, Duvaud S, Flegel V, Fortier A, Gasteiger E, Grosdidier A, Hernandez C, Ioannidis V, Kuznetsov D, Liechti R, Moretti S, Mostaguir K, Redaschi N, Rossier G, Xenarios I, Stockinger H. ExPASy: SIB bioinformatics resource portal
    Nucleic Acids Res. 2012 Jul;40(Web Server issue):W597-603. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gks400.
  • SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Members. The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases
    Nucleic Acids Res. 2016 Jan 4;44(D1):D27-37. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkv1310.

    • Maintainers

    The current maintainers are:

    Funding

    Expasy is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

    Submissions and Contact

    Please contact the Expasy Helpdesk if you are a SIB member wishing to submit or update an entry in Expasy, if you experience any issues or simply want to let us know what you think of Expasy.