MicroCT imaging is an exceptional tool for 3D visualisation. A new Data Note published in GigaScience reports on a unique, high-quality series of MicroCT images that covers the lifespan of an amphibian from tadpole to froglet to mature adult frog.

Plant phenotyping – the science of gathering precise information and measurements on plants – has seen massive improvements recently, and the combination of sensor technology and AI methods will continue to change the way crops are assessed and improved. A new article in GigaScience demonstrates where this is going: Jonas Bömer and colleagues at the Institute of Sugar Beet Research (Göttingen) used

Today we publish a new Data Release presenting a dataset of jellyfish sightings collected by citizen scientists from 2021 through 2023 within Hong Kong waters. This is the first example where our curation team have worked with a Citizen Science project to share their observations in the GBIF biodiversity database.

The first emblematic species sequenced by the Hong Kong Biodiversity Genomics Consortium are published to coincide with International DNA Day.

The 9th Women in Science Conference took place in Shenzhen. Below are some highlights from the conference co-organized by our Publishing Director, Laurie Goodman, and Co-Chaired by Doris Yang, from BGI-College.   Today,  March 8, 2024 marks International Women’s Day – where women’s achievement and inclusivity is celebrated.

Few countries have a biodiversity that’s comparable to Brazil’s, including plant-based food sources that are little known elsewhere.  Even in big cities you may pick all kinds of fruit directly from the tree, which can be both tasty and also interesting for the botanist. The Citizen Science project “Pomar Urbano” collects data on urban fruit-bearing plant in Brazilian cities.

*A multitude of papers on novel methods for Spatial Omics are published in a cross-journal series launching today in GigaScience and GigaByte Journals. * Spatial Omics is a new field that is taking large-scale data-rich biological and biomedical research into new dimensions. Which is having a significant impact on the fundamental fields of biology and biomedicine.

PAG (Plant and Animal Genomes conference) returned to the Town and Country resort San Diego for its 31st installment this January (Jan 12-17, 2024), bigger and better than ever before! The GigaScience Press team are regular attendees of the meeting (see last years write-up), and this year members of our Editorial and Curation teams joined nearly 3000 delegates from over 60 countries.

In the beginning GigaScience was at the first AsiaEvo conference, which took place in Shenzhen, China in 2019. Back then, the chair of the first AsiaEvo Conference, Guojie Zhang (longtime friend and board member of GigaScience ) said of the history of the AsiaEvo meeting series:

We start the new year with news from the deep, published in GigaScience : The genome of a sea cucumber, collected at a depth of 2400 m during a submarine trip to a hydrothermal vent, helps scientists to understand how marine animals can survive in extreme conditions. Hydrothermal vents are an unlikely environment for animals to flourish.