Regular readers will know GigaScience has published a lot of plant and animal genomes, and the biggest conference for this research community is the appropriately named Plant &

The 21st meeting of the Genomics Standards Consortium (GSC21) took place last week in Vienna at one of the oldest universities in the world – the University of Vienna – from May 20th-23rd.  We’ve been long time supporters and participants of the Genomics Standards Consortium meetings going back to 2012’s GSC13 in Shenzhen, and have also published a special series of GSC “Best Practice in Genomics Research” papers.

Just out in GigaScience is a new paper presenting Rice Galaxy, an open resource for plant science using the Galaxy workflow management system we are so fond of. The authors from the International Rice Research Institute in the Phillipines are winners of our 2018 ICG13 Prize, and as this is the final paper to be published we can now present a summary of the  competition.

The 12th International Biocuration Conference was held in Cambridge, UK from April 7-10th 2019. As regular participants of the meeting you can read our write-ups of the meeting going back to 2012. This is a forum for biocurators and developers to discuss their work and to promote collaboration.

The diffraction limit of a microscope hinders the ability to see single molecules as the optics do not allow the researcher to distinguish between two fluorescently labelled molecules that are less than 200nm apart. As a means of overcoming this barrier, super-resolution microscopy utilises various tricks to go beyond the diffraction limit and image sub-cellular nanostructure in cells and tissues.

As an Open Science journal, one of the main aims of GigaScience is to break down barriers. Both in the access of research and the underlying data and code supporting it, and the barriers holding back the researchers themselves.

Due to popular demand we are keeping the paper submission deadline of our ICG prize track open until the end of the month. We’ve already received more submissions than our first competition last year, and a number of other submitters have been putting their finish touches to submission.

Call for Submissions – Win Prizes and Join us in Shenzhen for ICG-13 Being co-published by BGI we are regular participants at their yearly ICG (International Conference on Genomics) conference in Shenzhen. Since the very first meeting in 2006, ICG has grown to become one of the most influential annual meetings in ‘omics’ research, and is now in its 13th edition.

GigaScience are regular attendees of the International Biocuration Conference, and you may have read our write-ups ups going back to 2012 edition. This year Biocuration is back behind the bamboo curtain, with the 11th conference held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel Shanghai from April 8th-11th and hosted by Fudan University. Symbolised by the spectacular Bund waterfront, Shanghai is the very symbol of modern China, and there was a

ConGen (Recent Advances in Conservation Genetics), an international course taught by leading experts in the field, is a fantastic opportunity to learn how the latest genomic and genetic methods contribute to conservation science. Protecting endangered species also means we have to know as much as possible about them.