Reviews & Analysis

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  • In this Review, the authors compare the characteristics and detection methods of germline and somatic variants. Furthermore, they outline how the interplay between the two types of genetic variation can affect human health.

    • Zhi Yu
    • Tim H. H. Coorens
    • Pradeep Natarajan
    Review Article
  • Plants have uniquely adapted to manage endoplasmic reticulum stress triggered by protein misfolding. The authors review the dynamics of gene expression regulation underlying the unfolded protein response in plants, highlighting recent insights provided by systems-level approaches and omics data.

    • Dae Kwan Ko
    • Federica Brandizzi
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Sayers et al. summarize findings from recent large-scale genetic epidemiology studies on the genetic underpinnings of chronic respiratory diseases. Furthermore, they outline how insights gained from such studies can improve treatment approaches.

    • Ian Sayers
    • Catherine John
    • Ian P. Hall
    Review Article
  • Therapeutics that target long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are promising treatments for cancer. In this Review, the authors discuss how technological advances have helped improve drug discovery pipelines for lncRNAs and overview their strengths and challenges as oncological therapeutics.

    • Michela Coan
    • Simon Haefliger
    • Rory Johnson
    Review Article
  • Plant pangenomes have had a transformative impact on crop enhancement, biodiversity conservation and evolutionary research. This Review delves into the application of plant pangenomes for understanding trait diversity, aiding breeding, biodiversity classification and monitoring, and illuminating evolutionary innovations.

    • Mona Schreiber
    • Murukarthick Jayakodi
    • Martin Mascher
    Review Article
  • This Review discusses the evolutionary origin of Wnt signalling, its ancestral function and the characteristics of the primal Wnt ligand. It emphasizes the importance of genomic studies in pre-metazoan and basal metazoan species to understanding the evolutionary origin of signalling pathways.

    • Michaela Holzem
    • Michael Boutros
    • Thomas W. Holstein
    Review Article
  • This Review describes tools and approaches for characterizing short tandem repeats in the human genome from whole-genome sequencing data. Furthermore, the authors discuss how these recent developments have helped to better understand the effect of short tandem repeats on human health and disease.

    • Hope A. Tanudisastro
    • Ira W. Deveson
    • Daniel G. MacArthur
    Review Article
  • Multiple mechanisms have evolved to prevent or trap deleterious unwanted transcripts. The unwanted transcript hypothesis proposes that selection at synonymous sites favours mutations that prevent the generation of unwanted transcripts or that make native transcripts appear ‘wanted’ by being GC-rich.

    • Sofia Radrizzani
    • Grzegorz Kudla
    • Laurence D. Hurst
    Perspective
  • To successfully invade bacteria, bacteriophages and other mobile genetic elements must overcome numerous types of bacterial defence systems. Here, the authors review the discovery and mechanisms of direct inhibitors of bacterial defence systems, as well as their applications in biotechnology.

    • David Mayo-Muñoz
    • Rafael Pinilla-Redondo
    • Peter C. Fineran
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Patrick Keeling proposes that the eukaryotic-specific processes of phagocytosis and endosymbiosis are unlikely to increase the frequency of horizontal gene transfers, because most of the transferred genes will be non-essential and will thus not be selected for the long term.

    • Patrick J. Keeling
    Review Article
  • In this Review, the authors summarize recent progress in cell–cell interaction (CCI) research. They describe the recent evolution in computational tools that underpin CCI studies, discuss improvements in experimental methods enabling more high-throughput analyses of CCIs, and highlight future directions for the field.

    • Erick Armingol
    • Hratch M. Baghdassarian
    • Nathan E. Lewis
    Review Article
  • Genomic technologies have greatly improved the diagnosis of rare genetic diseases. Here, the authors review emerging approaches for the identification of disease-causal genetic variants as well as omic technologies that show great potential for variant interpretation.

    • Kristin D. Kernohan
    • Kym M. Boycott
    Review Article
  • In this Review, the authors summarize and discuss guidelines for omics benchmarking. They highlight common oversights and difficulties, offer guidance for frequently encountered issues and provide a structured form that can be used for comprehensive reporting of benchmarking studies.

    • Thomas G. Brooks
    • Nicholas F. Lahens
    • Gregory R. Grant
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Hwang and co-authors outline single-molecule fluorescence imaging techniques that can be used in living cells to visualize individual molecules involved in the spatiotemporal regulation of gene expression. This Review also delves into the biological insights gained through these methodologies.

    • Dong-Woo Hwang
    • Anna Maekiniemi
    • Hanae Sato
    Review Article
  • This Perspective reviews large-scale genomics and longitudinal phenomics efforts and the insights they can provide into wellness. The authors describe their vision for the transformation of the current health care from disease-oriented to data-driven, wellness-oriented and personalized population health.

    • James T. Yurkovich
    • Simon J. Evans
    • Leroy E. Hood
    Perspective
  • In this Review, the authors describe the evolutionary conservation and divergence of the meiotic recombination machinery, focusing on proteins that are required for meiotic double-strand break formation, double-strand break repair via homologous recombination and the formation of crossover and non-crossover recombinant DNA molecules.

    • Meret Arter
    • Scott Keeney
    Review Article
  • In this Perspective, Carolyn Hogg discusses the utility of genomic data to conservation and the importance of adopting a translational mindset to ensure that genomics is used to its full potential to protect Earths’ declining biodiversity.

    • Carolyn J. Hogg
    Perspective