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Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, recently highlighted in Nature the need to identify and correct systematic problems in biomedical research. One such effort, the Stanford Meta-Research Innovation Center, will monitor the practice of research and suggest policies for improvement. We commend this initiative that supports our commitment to publishing scientifically rigorous research.
Diverse neurodegenerative diseases share a common pathological feature, namely the accumulation of misfolded proteins. However, both drug development and research need more standardization of the biomarkers for the protein types involved. The bold strategy of integrating high-throughput genetic and chemical screens in yeast with experiments in neurons derived from genetically modified human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is producing many significant new molecular insights into disease mechanisms.
Community standards for data access, interoperability and metadata only make sense if data are creatively reused to further research. We are therefore inviting the submission of Analysis papers that reformat and integrate existing data sets to generate substantial novel insights into gene expression in cell differentiation transitions and different cell fates.
The price of DNA sequencing has never been lower. However, there is little consensus as to when the identification of a genetic variant is clinically useful. Clinical geneticists carrying out systematic community reviews of evidence for the pathogenicity of variants collected in locus-specific and disease-specific databases are beginning to bridge the gap between research evidence and rules used to make clinical decisions.