GigaScience’s T2T Series has now launched, with our first papers showcasing new Telomere-to-Telomere methods and genomic data sets. While the first draft of the Human Genome was declared complete in April 2003, it took a further two decades for the publication of the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome in March 2022.

FUNC on Safari: Functional Metagenomics conference 2024 at Skukuza, Kruger National Park, South Africa (2nd – 5th June 2024) FMG24 participants group photo, taken outside the conference centre at Skukuza rest camp.

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

The Annual International Biocuration Conference (AIBC) was held for the first in India, at the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC), Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad and co-hosted by the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus. As usual, GigaDB had representation at the event (see write-ups of many previous meetings here), Mary Ann Tuli and Chris Hunter. Both of whom were wearing two hats!

Kevin Ashley’s (DCC director) closing remark at the IDCC (International Digital Curation Conference) 2024 meeting was “ Reflect, Enjoy, Do something! ”. Hopefully you will enjoy my doing something.

Marking the 10 ^th anniversary of the formulation of the FAIR principles, we have one of our GigaBlog Q&A’s with Peter-Bram ’t Hoen, Alain van Gool, Anna Niehues and Casper de Visser from the Netherlands X-omics Initiative and Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, authors of a new paper on publishing FAIR workflows.

There is a plethora of articles and predictions about the future development of AI. Reading through them suggests three main areas of high-impact changes that would transform our daily lives: Healthcare, Automation, and Manufacturing. The impact of AI in these industries is profound and multifaceted, with each sector experiencing unique transformations. Some of these ideas are described in this NVIDIA article by Cliff Edwards.

The GSC23 international meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand earlier this month (Aug 7-11th) and here we have an overview of this meeting. The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) is a volunteer-run non-profit organization set up nearly 20 years ago. At a time when “genomic” researchers were painstakingly producing near-complete genomes of just a few organisms.

This week in GigaScience , Hasindu Gamaarachchi and colleagues published a paper on their HARU solution for selective sequencing, to be used alongside the handheld (“tricorder” like) Nanopore MinION device . With the MinION, it is possible to kick out all non-target DNA strands before they are processed through the device’s pores, thus selectively sequencing specific target regions of the genome.

*Series Editors: Jue Ruan (Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) and Fritz J Sedlazeck (Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine) *   While the first draft of the Human Genome was announced back in June 2000 and declared complete in April 2003, it took 20 years for the publication of the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome in March 2022.