A new article published today in GigaScience demonstrates that machine learning can yield “proxy measures” for brain-related health issues from large population data, without the need for a specialist’s assessment.

Genomics is a powerful technology that helps us understand the Tree of Life. Biodiversity Genomics 2021 was a virtual conference that took place on 27 ^th September-1st October 2021 that demonstrated how genomics can inform conservation and food security, and can additionally help us understand evolutionary novelties such as symbiosis.

Embracing identity in Peer Review The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark focus is the importance of both a speedy dissemination of research (something our participation in the C19 Rapid Review Consortium has tried to tackle), and the need to be able to trust the validity of this information.

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference is an annual gathering for scientists from bioinformatics, molecular biology, and data science and provides a multidisciplinary environment for disseminating recent research and development in computational biology.

A new “multi-modal” data set on arm motion control, published recently in GigaScience , is an important contribution to develop robotic prosthetic devices and other tools at the interface between human and machine. Robotic arms and other devices that support limb movements are getting ever more sophisticated.

Since the very start of GigaScience we’ve been strong proponents of Data Citation, helping promote and practice the procedure of affording data the same importance in the scholarly record as citations of other research objects such as publications (see examples of this in GigaBlog and BMC Res Notes ). These efforts by the wider community culminated

GigaScience Presses new GigaByte Journal was launched with the goal of speeding up the dissemination of science, publishing at the speed of research . Beyond speeding up the research process by incentivizing the early release of datasets and software/computational workflows by focusing on short descriptions of these two article types (called Data Release and Technical Release), we’ve also tried to greatly speed up the normally

GigaScience has always had a focus on reproducibility rather than subjective impact, and it can be challenging for our reviewers to judge this, especially now that more and more tools are being created – bringing data science to the masses.  This also means more efficiency and ease is required especially when multiple collaborators and contributors on a specific project are involved.

This week in GigaScience we published the genome of the mediterranean cone snail, Lautoconus ventricosus . Cone snails produce a wide variety of powerful toxins and the new chromosome-scale genome assembly opens the door for detailed investigations of their diversity and evolution. Cone snails are beloved by collectors for their often beautiful shells, but they are infamous because of their powerful venom.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) hosted the two-day virtual workshop “Changing the Culture of Data Management and Sharing” on 28th-29th April 2021 to discuss the challenges and opportunities for establishing effective data management and sharing practices and exploring the question of universal availability of scientific data.