This list will be updated with all of our new commentaries including Comments, Editorials, Meeting reports, Opinions and Q&As. Commentaries in Genome Biology are open access and therefore free to read and share.
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The use of the human reference genome has shaped methods and data across modern genomics. This has offered many benefits while creating a few constraints. In the following opinion, we outline the history, prop...
Genetic, transcriptional, and post-transcriptional variations shape the transcriptome of individual cells, rendering establishing an exhaustive set of reference RNAs a complicated matter. Current reference tra...
Data science allows the extraction of practical insights from large-scale data. Here, we contextualize it as an umbrella term, encompassing several disparate subdomains. We focus on how genomics fits as a spec...
While the genome sequencing revolution has led to the sequencing and assembly of many thousands of new genomes, genome annotation still uses very nearly the same technology that we have used for the past two d...
Machine learning has demonstrated potential in analyzing large, complex biological data. In practice, however, biological information is required in addition to machine learning for successful application.
Implementation of bioinformatics software involves numerous unique challenges; a rigorous standardized approach is needed to examine software tools prior to their publication.
We polled the Editorial Board of Genome Biology to ask where they see genomics going in the next few years. Here are some of their responses.
Supplemental information is difficult to organize, review, and understand. Genome Biology has listed some new recommendations for the organization of supplemental data.
Function is an onerous concept, as the recent study by Steven Salzberg and colleagues demonstrates. We should be careful and always specific in using the ‘F-word’.
The original article was published in Genome Biology 2018 19:208
As part of our Q&A series, Genome Biology spoke to four scientists about their personal experiences as parents in their careers to highlight the challenges of researchers having children and the support they need...
A meeting report on the 14th Gordon Research Conference on Meiosis, held at Colby Sawyer College, New London, NH, USA, 9–15 June 2018, chaired by Monica Colaiacovo, Harvard Medical School.
With more than 10 million genotyped customers, the consumer genomics industry is maturing and becoming a mainstream phenomenon. At last, innovations and applications, some unforeseen, are being brought to the ...
A report on the International Plant and Animal Genomes (PAG) conference held in San Diego, USA, 13–17 January 2018.
Meeting report on the Cold Spring Harbor Asia conference on RNA Modifications and Epitranscriptomics, held in Suzhou, China, 13–17 November, 2017.
Continuing with our Q&A series discussing issues of diversity in STEM fields, Genome Biology spoke with three researchers on their experiences as immigrants.
The recent shift of computational biologists from bioinformatics service providers to leaders of cutting-edge programs highlights the accompanying cultural and conceptual changes that should be implemented by ...
Open Science is encouraged by the European Union and many other political and scientific institutions. However, scientific practice is proving slow to change. We propose, as early career researchers, that it i...
A meeting report on the Third European Association for Cancer Research Conference on Cancer Genomics, held at Churchill College, Cambridge, UK, 25–28 June 2017.
A report on the Second Aegean International Conference on the Long and the Short of Non-Coding RNAs, held in Heraklion, Greece, 9–14 June 2017.
A report on the 11th Genomics of Rare Disease meeting held at the Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK, 5–7 April, 2017.
Methylation in the bodies of active genes is common in animals and vascular plants. Evolutionary patterns indicate homeostatic functions for this type of methylation.
In the second of our series of articles celebrating peer reviewers, we talk to Robert Lowe, who is a Lecturer in computational biology at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and a valued reviewer for Genome Biol...
Supplements are increasingly important to the scientific record, particularly in genomics. However, they are often underutilized. Optimally, supplements should make results findable, accessible, interoperable,...
Continuing with our Q&A series discussing issues of diversity in STEM fields, Genome Biology spoke with three openly LGBT+ researchers on their experiences in biology.
We summarize the remarkable progress that has been made in the identification and functional characterization of DNA sequence variants associated with disease.
The director of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI), Guy Rouleau, discusses the recent announcement that the MNI will be completely committed to open science.
A report on the Genome Informatics conference, held at the Wellcome Genome Campus Conference Centre, Hinxton, United Kingdom, 19–22 September 2016.
The 10th anniversary ‘Genomics of Common Diseases’ meeting was held in Baltimore, September 25-28, 2016. Professor Chris Haley reports from the meeting on progress and challenges in the field.
A report on the Wellcome Trust Conference on Computational RNA Biology, held in Hinxton, UK, on 17–19 October 2016.
Nanopore DNA strand sequencing has emerged as a competitive, portable technology. Reads exceeding 150 kilobases have been achieved, as have in-field detection and analysis of clinical pathogens. We summarize k...
The Erratum to this article has been published in Genome Biology 2016 17:256
Studies of human genetic disorders have traditionally followed a reductionist paradigm. Traits are defined as Mendelian or complex based on family pedigree and population data, whereas alleles are deemed rare,...
What can be done to encourage and support women of color in STEM fields? Genome Biology spoke with three women of color who have had success in the area of genomics research.
Peer reviewers are the unsung heroes of science. We celebrate reviewers through a series of interviews with people who have made particularly strong recent contributions to Genome Biology as reviewers. The first ...
The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that appr...
The first Virus Genomics and Evolution Conference was held at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, 8–10 June 2016.
Emerging single-cell epigenomic methods are being developed with the exciting potential to transform our knowledge of gene regulation. Here we review available techniques and future possibilities, arguing that...
Single-cell transcriptomics has been employed in a growing number of animal studies, but the technique has yet to be widely used in plants. Nonetheless, early studies indicate that single-cell RNA-seq protocol...
A report on the Plant Epigenetics: From Genotype to Phenotype Keystone Symposium held in Taos, New Mexico, USA, 15–19 February, 2016.
As the cost of sequencing continues to decrease and the amount of sequence data generated grows, new paradigms for data storage and analysis are increasingly important. The relative scaling behavior of these e...
The Erratum to this article has been published in Genome Biology 2016 17:78
A report on the second meeting on ‘Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology: Tools and Technologies’, held 28–29 January 2016 in Ghent, Belgium.
A report on the first EMBO conference entitled “Next Gen Immunology—From Host Genome to the Microbiome: Immunity in the Genomic Era”, held at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, 14–16 February, 2016.