Article Series

Hong Kong Biodiversity Genomics

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0006

The Hong Kong Biodiversity Genomics Consortium (a.k.a. the EarthBioGenome Project Hong Kong) is a joint effort of eight local universities funded by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC). This project aims to sequence genomes of local animals, plants, and fungi in the local territory with a state-of-the-art genome sequencer and to form a local network of biodiversity genomic research hub. And is aligned with the aims of the Earth BioGenome Project, which has been described as a moonshot project for biology, aims to sequence, catalogue, and analyse the genomes of all eukaryotes on Earth. This series helps collect papers providing resources to assist these aims.

Spatial Omics: Methods and Application

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0005

Spatial Omics is a burgeoning field revolutionizing large-scale biological and biomedical research. Initially focused on spatial transcriptomics, it enables precise, high-dimensional analysis of gene transcription locations within tissues and cells, offering unprecedented insights into cellular architecture across various disciplines including embryology, histology, immunology, and oncology. Named 'Method of the Year' by Nature Methods in 2021, its computational analysis presents challenges due to the vast and multi-dimensional nature of the data. GigaByte addresses these challenges by launching a thematic series, 'Spatial Omics Methods and Applications,' aimed at advancing methods, applications, and addressing associated challenges.

Explore related papers in our sister journal, GigaScience, here: https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/spatial-omics-methods-and-applications

Snake Genomes

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0004

Snakes (Squamata: Serpentes) are a species rich monophyletic lineage, comprising over 3,500 extant species found in all continents, except Antarctica. From an evolutionary perspective, these reptiles stand out for their lack of limbs and exclusively carnivorous diet. Making them important model organisms for evolutionary studies and have yielded insights into limb development, sex chromosome evolution and venom evolution. More genomic data is required for these types of studies, and the papers published here will provide resources to assist this research.

PhysiCell Ecosystem

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0003

The PhysiCell project (http://physicell.org/) is an open source, scalable code - to simulate large systems of cells in 3-D tissues on standard desktop computers. The project is aimed at tackling the challenges of multicellcular systems biology. Here we present a collection of papers that utilise or build upon the PhysiCell platform. This collection serves to improve data sharing and reproducibility within the multicellular system biology field and beyond. These short open-source application papers are companions to the “Data-Driven Multicellular Systems Biology'' thematic series in our sister journal, GigaScience https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/multicellular_systems_biology_series

Vectors of human disease series

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0002

Vector-borne diseases account for about one quarter of all infectious diseases. Although there has been significant progress for malaria, this progress is currently halting. Other diseases, such as those caused by arboviruses like dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika are expanding, with an increased number of cases and fatalities. There is a great need for data mobilization campaigns to improve data coverage to help research on these vector-borne diseases and human health. To address this need here we present collected series of Data Release papers with relevance for research on vectors of human vector-borne diseases. GigaScience Press has partnered with GBIF and supported by TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, hosted at the World Health Organization to publish these papers. Data presented has all been shared to GBIF.org with high-quality data and metadata to improve data coverage to help research on vector-borne diseases and human health. With the publication of the second phase of papers sponsorship is now over, but the series is still open for submissions and please contact the GigaByte editors or GBIF helpdesk if you have any questions on how to submit.

With thanks to the GBIF expert task group on human diseases for oversight and support..

Asian citrus psyllid community annotation

DOI 10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0001

A collected series of papers from CitrusGreening Solutions, a USDA NIFA Coordinated Agriculture Project working on citrus greening disease (also called huanglongbing), that has devastated the citrus industry in the US. The group works on the assembly and annotation of the genome of Diaphorina citri, the sap-sucking, hemipteran bug that is the vector for citrus greening disease. These papers are a series of Data Releases crediting the outputs of a student-focused and community-driven manual annotation project for curating gene models and, if required, correcting anomalies in the genome assembly. With the aim of generating a high quality annotation for a better understanding of the biology of this important vector and pathogen-induced changes in gene regulation to aid the development of new strategies in fighting the disease. For more see: https://citrusgreening.org/annotation/index