Latest posts
Democratising Data: The African Orphan Crops Consortium & International Data Week
Scott Edmunds - December 7, 2018
Pressing Challenges for the Global Research Community Continuous growth of the world population is expected to double the worldwide demand for food by 2050. Eighty-eight percent of countries currently face a serious burden of malnutrition, especially in Africa and South-East Asia. To diversify and stabilize global food supply, enhance agricultural productivity and tackle malnutrition, greater […]
Swallows and Optical Maps For Ever!
Scott Edmunds - November 30, 2018
While they say one swallow doesn’t make a spring, one swallow genome makes a welcome contribution to the avian genome club. Taking advantage of the latest genomic and optical mapping technologies, a team of Scientists from the University of Milan, California State Polytechnic University and the University of Pavia, have carried out the high quality […]
Tegu: the most complete assembly of any reptile genome
Hans Zauner - November 28, 2018
Today in GigaScience we present the genome of the tegu lizard. It is the most complete assembly of any reptile genome so far and will also aid scientists to study other lizards and snakes. The tegu has mastered a trick that is highly unusual in the reptile world: it can turn on its own heating […]
Genomes mite surprise you
Hans Zauner - November 19, 2018
In GigaScience, Benjamin Makepiece and his co-authors from Liverpool present genome assemblies of two trombidid mite species, the itch-inducing chigger mite and its more benign cousin, the velvet mite. The bite of the chigger mite can transmit a life-threatening bacterial disease, scrub typhus. When the authors explored the gene content of the mites’ genomes, searching clues for […]
Meet the GigaScience ICG Prize Winners, Pt. 1: Aequatus
Scott Edmunds - November 14, 2018
This is the Dawning of the Age of Aequatus Our ICG Prize is over now for another year, and we’ll shortly follow up with an announcement on which of the six winners won the $1000 first prize. To help you see how great all the entries were we will introduce and profile some of the […]
Women in Science – Helping Break the Final Barrier in Open Science
Mary Ann Tuli - November 8, 2018
The 4th annual Women in Science conference at ICG has just finished, and Mary Ann Tulli gives an update into what was covered and the travails women scientists have to deal with.
Phenomics: from under the gum trees to the world – the 5th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium down under
Nicole Nogoy - October 17, 2018
Having just attended our first plant phenomics conference – it was great to learn how far the field has progressed and how rapidly it continues to progress with the advancement of new technologies for high-throughput phenotyping. The greater plant phenomics community is trying to collect and define sets of physical and biochemical traits belonging […]
Making sense of pangenome networks
Hans Zauner - October 15, 2018
Navigating Pangenome’s Labyrinth In the two decades since the first genomes were sequenced, with the exponential growth of new and closely related genomes it has become increasingly difficult to visualise and compare their structure. Particularly with the large diversity and difference in genes within microbial genomes. A new computational pipeline, published in GigaScience, makes it […]
Toads and toxins: The genome of the invasive cane toad
Hans Zauner - September 24, 2018
The cane toad Rhinella marina is native to Central and South America. But thanks to humans and the sugar cane trade, the species now thrives also in Australia and other places where it doesn’t belong. The invasive species comes with an unpleasant surprise for native Australian predators, such as snakes or freshwater crocodiles: R. marina kills them with its […]
Of Mice and Men (and Monkey) Microbiomes.
Scott Edmunds - August 31, 2018
New work in GigaScience introduces the macaque monkey to the microbial gene catalogue club, with the monkey microbiome joining other model organisms.