At GigaScience one of our major goals is to take the scientific publishing beyond dead trees and static PDFs to a more dynamic and interactive process, much like science itself has embraced the Internet to become more networked and data driven.

Researchers release a treasure trove of data on the developing retina, pushing the boundaries of neuroscience publishing by presenting it dynamically and reproducibly. A new paper in GigaScience today demonstrates a major step forward for reproducible research and public data-sharing in the neurosciences with the publication and release of a huge cache of electrophysiology data resources.

Visualizations are becoming increasing important to graphically illustrate, understand, and glean insight from the explosion of larger and larger datasets in this supposed era of “big data”. Microbial ecology and the study of the microbiome is revolutionizing how we look at health, microorganism diversity and ecological interactions, but these studies are proving challenging to deal with the ever-expanding numbers of specimens sampled.

Last week we published our first neuroscience data note containing 10GB of fMRI data hosted and integrated into the paper by a DOI to our GigaDB database. While we have published a number of genomics datasets and data notes (see the Puerto Rican Parrot genome data note and its associated data DOI), this is a nice example of us providing a home for “orphan data”, the long tail of data types without community agreed curated repositories.

Singapore – a wonderful city of diverse cultures and culinary affair, is not just about the infamous chilli crab or signature cocktail, Singapore Sling, but from the 13-19 April the vibrant country plays host to one of the largest meetings in genetics and genomics.

The precipitous drop in the price of next generation sequencing coupled with its increasing sensitivity has opened up whole new areas of research, one of the most interesting in recent years being the advent of single-cell sequencing. Combining advances in flow-sorting of cells, whole genome amplification and the latest sequencing technologies is now allowing researchers to study tumor evolution on a single-cell level.

This year is the “Year of Neuroscience” in Spain. As a part of this educational movement and celebration of the most recent flowering of Spanish neuroscience, Barcelona hosted the FENS Forum of Neuroscience. Drawing what the Chair of the Host Committee, Mara Dierssen, described as the largest number of attendees ever, the 8 ^th FENS meeting fostered cross-disciplinary discussion and showcased some of the field’s best science.

With genetics and genomics being complicated enough, epigenomics adds even more layers of control and regulation of gene expression, and high-throughput global analyses of epigenetic changes further add to the reams of biological information many people are already referring to as the “data-deluge”.

The Human Variome Project (HVP) Beijing Meeting has officially ended (though a number of delegates will be busy tomorrow at the Advisory Council meeting). The energy and commitment towards better understanding and treatment of heritable diseases displayed by both the speakers and participants was great to see. Peter Taschner’s talk on the Leiden Open (source) Variation Database (LOVD) system was very well received, and a number of

GigaScience was on hand to witness plenty of lively discussion last week at the annual American Society of Human Genetics jamboree: the International Conference of Human Genetics in Montreal. As always, the meeting had a strong medical genetics presence but the rapid growth and uptake of genomics technologies in the field produced much fascinating work on display this year.