C-ELIXIR.01: From tools to interoperable workflows for nucleic acid structures: the NA Hackathon 2026 as an ELIXIR community model
Keywords
ELIXIR; nucleic-acid structures; structural bioinformatics; reproducible workflows; Nextflow; interoperability; PDBe-KB; community hackathon
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The rapid growth of experimentally determined and AI-predicted macromolecular structures has shifted a central challenge in structural biology from data generation to scalable, standardised annotation, validation, and integration. PDBe-KB provides an important foundation for this work by aggregating expert annotations and placing structural data in biological context.
Within an ongoing ELIXIR Implementation Study spanning the 3D-BioInfo community, the Nucleic Acid Structure Annotation & Prediction Hackathon 2026 was held in Prague on 27–29 May 2026. The event brought together domain experts, software developers, data-resource contributors, and early-career researchers to work on practical, reusable outputs for nucleic-acid structural bioinformatics.
The hackathon focused on two connected areas: interoperable workflows for nucleic-acid structure annotation and validation, and improved representation and visualization of Watson–Crick and non-Watson–Crick base-pair interactions. Participants adapted existing tools into reusable workflow components, tested shared benchmark cases, compared annotation routes, and developed documentation, specifications, and prototype implementations. Outputs included a modular Nextflow-based workflow structure for annotation and validation from mmCIF input, routes for standardised base-pairing outputs and validation reports, exploratory graph-based downstream representations, and linked 2D/3D visualization prototypes connecting base-pair notation, secondary-structure diagrams, and molecular structures.
The resulting outputs were structured with future PDBe-compatible dissemination and integration in mind, using standardised and provenance-aware formats where possible, including mmCIF-based representations. While further refinement and validation are required before production use, the hackathon produced concrete reusable components, examples, and follow-up directions for the wider community.
This work illustrates how focused, domain-specific hackathons can strengthen cross-community collaboration within ELIXIR and provide a practical model for transforming distributed expertise into sustainable, reusable infrastructure for nucleic-acid structure annotation, validation, and visualization.
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