Initially discovered in bacteria and archaea as adaptive immune strategies against invading nucleic acids, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated protein (CRISPR-Cas) system has now been repurposed as a practical tool for genome editing and other applications [1]. Owing to its flexibility, simplicity, efficiency and precision, the application of CRISPR systems in medicine

RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is a complicated protocol, both in the laboratory in generation of data and at the computer in analysis of results. Several decisions during RNA-Seq library construction have important implications for analysis, most notably strandedness during complementary DNA library construction. Here, we clarify bioinformatic decisions related to strandedness in both alignment of DNA sequencing

Oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding (OB)-fold proteins play essential roles in the regulation of genome and its correct transformation to the subsequent generation. To maintain the genomic stability, OB-fold proteins are implicated in various cellular processes including DNA replication, DNA repair, cell cycle regulation and maintenance of telomere. The diverse functional spectrums of OB-fold proteins

Next generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionised rare disease diagnostics. Concomitant with advancing technologies has been a rise in the number of new gene disorders discovered and diagnoses made for patients and their families. However, despite the trend towards whole exome and whole genome sequencing, diagnostic rates remain suboptimal. On average, only ~30% of patients receive a molecular diagnosis

The advent of high-resolution chromosome conformation capture assays (such as 5C, Hi-C and Pore-C) has allowed for unprecedented sequence-level investigations into the structure-function relationship of the genome. In order to comprehensively understand this relationship, computational tools are required that utilize data generated from these assays to predict 3D genome organization (the 3D genome

Carotenoids are mostly C40 terpenoids that participate in several important functions in plants including photosynthesis, responses to various forms of stress, signal transduction and photoprotection. While the antioxidant potential of carotenoids is of particular importance for human health, equally important is the role of β-carotene as the precursor for vitamin A in the human diet. Rice, which contributes

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has generated numerous data and renewed our understanding of biological phenomena at the cellular scale. Identification of cell types has been one of the most prevalent means for interpreting scRNA-seq data, based upon which connections are made between the transcriptome and phenotype. Herein, we attempt to review the methods and tools that dedicate to the task

The introduction of Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) by Job Dekker and colleagues in 2002, followed by derivatives that incorporate high-throughput sequencing—most notably Hi-C—have transformed the study of eukaryotic 3D genome organization [1,2]. Whereas prior imaging-based studies mostly focused on the positioning of genomic regions within the cell nucleus or relative to other structures, 3C-based

Research on plant three-dimensional (3D) genome architecture made rapid progress over the past 5 years. Numerous Hi-C interaction data sets were generated in a wide range of plant species, allowing for a comprehensive overview on 3D chromosome folding principles in the plant kingdom. Plants lack important genes reported to be vital for chromosome folding in animals. However, similar 3D structures such

The spatial organization of the genome contributes to essential functions such as transcription and chromosome integrity maintenance. The principles governing nuclear compartmentalization have been the focus of considerable research over the last decade. In these studies, the genome-nuclear structure interactions emerged as a main driver of this particular 3D genome organization. In this review, we

A precise three-dimensional (3D) organization of chromatin is central to achieve the intricate transcriptional patterns that are required to form complex organisms. Growing evidence supports an important role of 3D chromatin architecture in development and delineates its alterations as prominent causes of disease. In this review, we discuss emerging concepts on the fundamental forces shaping genomes

We review the mechanism and consequences of the 'bridging-induced attraction', a generic biophysical principle that underpins some existing models for chromosome organization in 3D. This attraction, which was revealed in polymer physics-inspired computer simulations, is a generic clustering tendency arising in multivalent chromatin-binding proteins, and it provides an explanation for the biogenesis

Genomic analysis of individuals or organisms is predicated on the availability of high-quality reference and genotype information. With the rapidly dropping costs of high-throughput DNA sequencing, this is becoming readily available for diverse organisms and for increasingly large populations of individuals. Despite these advances, there are still aspects of genome sequencing that remain challenging

Chromosomes have a complex three-dimensional (3D) architecture comprising A/B compartments, topologically associating domains and promoter–enhancer interactions. At all these levels, the 3D genome has functional consequences for gene transcription and therefore for cellular identity. The development and activation of lymphocytes involves strict control of gene expression by transcription factors (TFs)

Ever since Thomas Hunt Morgan’s discovery of the chromosomal basis of inheritance by using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, the fruit fly has remained an essential model system in studies of genome biology, including chromatin organisation. Very much as in vertebrates, in Drosophila, the genome is organised in territories, compartments and topologically associating domains (TADs). However

Understanding how genomes fold and organize is one of the main challenges in modern biology. Recent high-throughput techniques like Hi-C, in combination with cutting-edge polymer physics models, have provided access to precise information on 3D chromosome folding to decipher the mechanisms driving such multi-scale organization. In particular, structural maintenance of chromosome (SMC) proteins play

RNA interference (RNAi) is an important phenomenon that has diverse genetic regulatory functions at the pre- and posttranscriptional levels. The major trigger for the RNAi pathway is double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). dsRNA is processed to generate various types of major small noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that include microRNAs (miRNAs), small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in Drosophila

A plant communicates within itself and with the outside world by deploying an array of agents that include several attractants by virtue of their color and smell. In this category, the contribution of ‘carotenoids and apocarotenoids’ is very significant. Apocarotenoids, the carotenoid-derived compounds, show wide representation among organisms. Their biosynthesis occurs by oxidative cleavage of carotenoids

The advent of high-throughput genomic technologies has resulted in the accumulation of massive amounts of genomic information. However, biologists are challenged with how to effectively analyze these data. Machine learning can provide tools for better and more efficient data analysis. Unfortunately, because many plant biologists are unfamiliar with machine learning, its application in plant molecular

In silico DNA sequence generation is a powerful technology to evaluate and validate bioinformatics tools, and accordingly more than 35 DNA sequence simulation tools have been developed. With such a diverse array of tools to choose from, an important question is: Which tool should be used for a desired outcome? This question is largely unanswered as documentation for many of these DNA simulation tools

Although for more than a century a protein function was intimately associated with the presence of unique structure in a protein molecule, recent years witnessed a skyrocket rise of the appreciation of protein intrinsic disorder concept that emphasizes the importance of the biologically active proteins without ordered structures. In different proteins, the depth and breadth of disorder penetrance are

Tobacco is one of the most widely cultivated nonfood cash crops, a source of income, model organism for plant molecular research, a natural pesticide and of pharmaceutical importance. First domesticated in South Americas, the modern-day tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is now cultivated in more than 125 countries to generate revenues worth billions of dollars each year. However, the production of this crop

Several plant pathogens severely affect crop yield and quality, thereby threatening global food security. In order to cope with this challenge, genetic improvement of plant disease resistance is required for sustainable agricultural production, for which conventional breeding is unlikely to do enough. Luckily, genome editing systems that particularly clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic

The recent developments of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR)/-associate protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) have got scientific interests due to the straightforward, efficient and versatile talents of it. Furthermore, the CRISPR/Cas9 system has democratized access to gene editing in many biological fields, including cancer. Cancer development is a multistep process caused by innate

Gene editing refers to the site-specific modification of the genome, which mainly focuses on basic research, model organism construction and treatment and prevention of disease. Since the first application of CRISPR/Cas9 on the human embryo genome in 2015, the controversy over embryo gene editing (abbreviated as EGE in the following text) has never stopped. At present, the main contradictions focus

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) is described as RNA mediated adaptive immune system defense, which is naturally found in bacteria and archaea. CRISPR-Cas9 has shown great promise for cancer treatment in cancer immunotherapy, manipulation of cancer genome and epigenome and elimination or inactivation of carcinogenic viral infections. However, many challenges remain

CRISPR/Cas9, as a new genome-editing tool, offers new approaches to understand and treat diseases, which is being rapidly applied in various areas of biomedical research including sepsis field. The type II prokaryotic CRISPR/Cas system uses a single-guide RNA (sgRNA) to target the Cas9 nuclease to a specific genomic sequence, which is introduced into disease models for functional characterization and

Chimeric antigen receptor(CAR) T-cell therapy has shown remarkable effects and promising prospects in patients with refractory or relapsed malignancies, pending further progress in the next-generation CAR T cells with more optimized structure, enhanced efficacy and reduced toxicities. The clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) technology

Coronary artery disease (CAD) and ischemic stroke are the two most predominant forms of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) caused by genetic, epigenetic and environmental risk factors. Although studies on the impact of 'epigenetics' in CVDs is not new, its effects are increasingly being realized as a key regulatory determinant that may drive predisposition, pathophysiology and therapeutic outcome. The

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells have raised among other immunotherapies for cancer treatment, being implemented against B-cell malignancies. Despite the promising outcomes of this innovative technology, CAR-T cells are not exempt from limitations that must yet to be overcome in order to provide reliable and more efficient treatments against other types of cancer. The purpose of this

Epigenome editing is a promising approach for both basic research and clinical application. With the convergence of techniques from different fields, regulating gene expression artificially becomes possible. From a clinical point of view, targeted epigenome editing by CRISPR/Cas9 of disease-related genes offers novel therapeutic avenues for many diseases. In this review, we summarize the EpiEffectors

Cancer immunotherapy, consisting of antibodies, adoptive T-cell transfer, vaccines and cytokines, is a novel strategy for fighting cancer by artificially stimulating the immune system. It has developed rapidly in recent years, and its efficacy in hematological malignancies and solid tumors has been remarkable. It is regarded as one of the most promising methods for cancer therapy. The current trend

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated protein 9 (Cas9) is one of the most versatile and efficient gene editing technologies, which is derived from adaptive immune strategies for bacteria and archaea. With the remarkable development of programmable nuclease-based genome engineering these years, CRISPR-Cas9 system has developed quickly in recent 5 years and has

Tools based on RNA interference (RNAi) and the recently developed clustered regularly short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system enable the selective modification of gene expression, which also makes them attractive therapeutic reagents for combating HIV infection and other infectious diseases. Several parallels can be drawn between the RNAi and CRISPR-Cas9 platforms. An ideal RNAi or CRISPR-Cas9 therapeutic

Polycomb group proteins (PcGs) control the epigenetic and transcriptional state of developmental genes and regulatory elements during mammalian embryogenesis. Moreover, PcGs can also contribute to 3D genome organization, adding an additional layer of complexity to their regulatory functions. Understanding the mechanistic basis and the dynamics of PcG-dependent chromatin structures will help us untangle

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification, as one of the commonest post-transcription modifications in RNAs, has been reported to be highly related to many biological processes. Over the past decade, several tools for m6A sites prediction of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been developed and are freely available online. However, the quality of predictions by these tools is difficult to quantify and compare

Gastropods are the largest and most diverse class of mollusc and include species that are well studied within the areas of taxonomy, aquaculture, biomineralization, ecology, microbiome and health. Gastropod research has been expanding since the mid-2000s, largely due to large-scale data integration from next-generation sequencing and mass spectrometry in which transcripts, proteins and metabolites

The way that chromatin is organized in three-dimensional nuclear space is now acknowledged as a factor critical for the major cell processes, like transcription, replication and cell division. Researchers have been armed with new molecular and imaging technologies to study this structure-to-function link of genomes, spearheaded by the introduction of the 'chromosome conformation capture' technology

Illuminating the role of specific gene duplications within the human lineage can provide insights into human-specific adaptations. The so-called human core duplicon gene families have received particular attention in this respect, due to special features, such as expansion along single chromosomes, newly acquired protein domains and signatures of positive selection. Here, we summarize the data available

Tumor metastasis is the key reason for the high mortality rate of tumor. Growing number of scholars have begun to pay attention to the research on tumor metastasis and have achieved satisfactory results in this field. The advent of the era of sequencing has enabled us to study cancer metastasis at the molecular level, which is essential for understanding the molecular mechanism of metastasis, identifying

Zebrafish or Danio rerio is an established model organism for studying the genetic, neuronal and behavioral bases of diseases and for toxicology and drug screening. The embryonic and larval stages of zebrafish have been used extensively in fundamental and applied research due to advantages offered such as body transparency, small size, low cost of cultivation and high genetic homology with humans.

Due to the unique selective pressures and extreme changes faced by the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum throughout its life cycle, the parasite has evolved distinct features to alter its gene expression patterns. Along with classical gene regulation by transcription factors (TFs), of which only one family, the AP2 TFs, has been described in the parasite genome, a large body of evidence

CRISPR/Cas9 approaches are revolutionizing our ability to perform functional genomics across a wide range of organisms, including the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. The ability to deliver single point mutations, epitope tags and gene deletions at increased speed and scale is enabling our understanding of the biology of these complex parasites, and pointing to potential new therapeutic targets

Two simian malaria parasite species, Plasmodium knowlesi and Plasmodium cynomolgi, cause zoonotic infections in Southeast Asia, and they have therefore gained recognition among scientists and public health officials. Notwithstanding, these species and others including Plasmodium coatneyi have served for decades as sources of knowledge on the biology, genetics and evolution of Plasmodium, and the diverse

Bioinoculants are eco-friendly microorganisms, and their products are utilized for improving the potential of soil and fulfill the nutrients requirement for the host plant. The agricultural yield has increased due to the use of bioinoculants over chemical-based fertilizers, and thus it generates interest in understanding the innovation process by various methods. By gene-editing tool, the desired gene

Malaria parasites are characterized by a complex life cycle that is accompanied by dynamic gene expression patterns. The factors and mechanisms that regulate gene expression in these parasites have been searched for even before the advent of next generation sequencing technologies. Functional genomics approaches have substantially boosted this area of research and have yielded significant insights

Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, the two protozoan parasite species that cause the majority of cases of human malaria, have developed resistance to nearly all known antimalarials. The ability of malaria parasites to develop resistance is primarily due to the high numbers of parasites in the infected person's bloodstream during the asexual blood stage of infection in conjunction with the

Transcriptional differences enable the generation of alternative phenotypes from the same genome. In malaria parasites, transcriptional plasticity plays a major role in the process of adaptation to fluctuations in the environment. Multiple studies with culture-adapted parasites and field isolates are starting to unravel the different transcriptional alternatives available to Plasmodium falciparum and

Malaria parasites face dynamically changing environments and strong selective constraints within human and mosquito hosts. To survive such hostile and shifting conditions, Plasmodium switches transcriptional programs during development and has evolved mechanisms to adjust its phenotype through heterogeneous patterns of gene expression. In vitro studies on culture-adapted isolates have served to set

Understanding the molecular basis of the gene-regulatory networks underlying agronomic traits or plant responses to abiotic/biotic stresses is very important for crop improvement. In this context, transcription factors, which either singularly or in conjugation directly control the expression of many target genes, are suitable candidates for improving agronomic traits via genetic engineering. In this

Through analysis of paired high-throughput DNA-Seq and RNA-Seq data, researchers quickly recognized that RNA-Seq can be used for more than just gene expression quantification. The alternative applications of RNA-Seq data are abundant, and we are particularly interested in its usefulness for detecting single-nucleotide variants, which arise from RNA editing, genomic variants and other RNA modifications

The application of third-generation sequencing (TGS) technology in genetics and genomics have provided opportunities to categorize and explore the individual genomic landscapes and mutations relevant for diagnosis and therapy using whole genome sequencing and de novo genome assembly. In general, the emerging TGS technology can produce high quality long reads for the determination of overlapping reads

miRNAs are class of endogenously initiated noncoding RNAs, which are most critical in gene expression and regulation at posttranscriptional level. They do so either by cleavage of the target mRNA or by translational repression. miRNAs are being given enough attention in recent years because of its role in myriad developmental processes including tumorogenesis and host-pathogen interaction. Advent of

The evolution of next-generation sequencing technologies has facilitated the detection of causal genetic variants in diseases previously undiagnosed at a molecular level. However, in genome sequencing studies, the identification of disease genes among a candidate gene list is often difficult because of the large number of apparently damaging (but usually neutral) variants. A number of variant prioritization

Omics, such as genomics, transcriptome and proteomics, has been affected by the era of big data. A huge amount of high dimensional and complex structured data has made it no longer applicable for conventional machine learning algorithms. Fortunately, deep learning technology can contribute toward resolving these challenges. There is evidence that deep learning can handle omics data well and resolve