Abel Ureta-Vidal, chief executive of Eagle Genomics.

Cambridgeshire bioinformatics services company Eagle Genomics has signed a collaboration agreement with the University of Manchester.

The company, based at the Babraham Research Campus, is to provide commercial support for Taverna the open-source workflow management system being developed by a team at the university.

The partnership with Eagle is an exciting opportunity to make Taverna tools a viable and supported part of the commercial software ecosystem, said professor Carole Goble, of the universitys School of Computer Science.

Researchers will also benefit from the commercial grading of Taverna by it being able to efficiently handle larger amounts of data.

Taverna is a computer program for designing and executing workflows. Workflows

represent scientific experiments and form a key part of biological research as scientists connect together a series of steps to transform their research data into knowledge.

Tavernas open-source nature allows it to be deployed universally without restriction and at no financial cost, providing scientists with easy access to the workflow tool.

Eagle Genomics chief executive Abel Ureta-Vidal said: This is a great opportunity to demonstrate Eagle Genomicss continued engagement with academic institutions to help spread the impact of the world-class bioinformatics research done in the UK.

At the same time, customers can invest in the use of the Taverna workflow management system with peace of mind, knowing that they can get professional support from a company that was set up to solve their specific issues.