Abstract
The20th century revealed the chemical foundations of living organisms down to the smallest detail. In the21st century, we need to understand the emerging properties of living organisms, under normal and pathological conditions. The challenges of this research are manifold: building an interdisciplinary community based on collaboration between experimental and theoretical sciences; developing highly innovative technologies, which must be made available to society in record time when the health situation demands it; and sharing resources to better coordinate research efforts. Europe is an exceptionally rich ecosystem. But only the structural and budgetary coordination of research on a European scale, embodied by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the European Research Council (ERC), will enable us to meet the challenges of innovation in biology, a science that transcends disciplinary boundaries.
