PAG (Plant and Animal Genomes conference) returned to the Town and Country resort San Diego for its 31st installment this January (Jan 12-17, 2024), bigger and better than ever before! The GigaScience Press team are regular attendees of the meeting (see last years write-up), and this year members of our Editorial and Curation teams joined nearly 3000 delegates from over 60 countries.

In the beginning GigaScience was at the first AsiaEvo conference, which took place in Shenzhen, China in 2019. Back then, the chair of the first AsiaEvo Conference, Guojie Zhang (longtime friend and board member of GigaScience ) said of the history of the AsiaEvo meeting series:

We start the new year with news from the deep, published in GigaScience : The genome of a sea cucumber, collected at a depth of 2400 m during a submarine trip to a hydrothermal vent, helps scientists to understand how marine animals can survive in extreme conditions. Hydrothermal vents are an unlikely environment for animals to flourish.

The fourth international Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Conference took place in Aguascalientes, Mexico from October 17th to October 20th 2023 where it was hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes.

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.

Once again the GigaScience Press team has gathered at the yearly ISMB (Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology) meeting to find out about the state of the art of computational biology, as well as celebrate our birthday . Hosted this year in the beautiful city of Lyon, and this year collocated with ISMB’s European sibling ECCB, it’s now been 11 years since GigaScience journals launch at ISMB 2012 in Long

Oat is among the top ten cereal crop species in terms of global production. It can adapt to different climates. Farmers grow it successfully even in harsh environments where other crops such as rice and corn fail. However, not all oat plants are the same. Based on their grains, two major oat varieties can easily be distinguished: Grains of “hulled oat” are covered in a non-edible husk.

Morpho butterflies are emblematic species of the Amazonian rainforest known for their metallic shades of blue and green. Despite their conspicuous looks and fascinating biology, large-scale genome sequencing efforts have somewhat neglected them – until now.

A new GigaScience article presents rich multi-dimensional data for one Alpine dingo named Cooinda . The high-quality genome sequence, other molecular biology data, and magnetic resonance imaging of brain tissue will serve as a point of reference for exploring the evolutionary history of dingoes.

After 2 cancellations due to the pandemic, the Plant and Animal Genomes conference returned to its in-person format in January with its 30th edition. A number of the talks focused on the effects of climate change either on biodiversity or crop development. It seems only fitting then, that the weather provided a suitable demonstration with California experiencing one of the longest periods of sustained rainfall in many years.