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  • Perspective
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Undisclosed, unmet and neglected challenges in multi-omics studies

Nature Computational Science volume 1, pages 395–402 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Multi-omics approaches have become a reality in both large genomics projects and small laboratories. However, the multi-omics research community still faces a number of issues that have either not been sufficiently discussed or for which current solutions are still limited. In this Perspective, we elaborate on these limitations and suggest points of attention for future research. We finally discuss new opportunities and challenges brought to the field by the rapid development of single-cell high-throughput molecular technologies.

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Fig. 1: Schematic representation of analysis goals in multi-omics studies.
Fig. 2: Challenges and opportunities in multi-omics data-integration.
Fig. 3: Comparison of the properties of omics data types.

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Data availability

The data used for Fig. 3 were taken from the publicly available STATegra dataset125. Pre-processed values used to generate graphs are provided together with the code.

Code availability

The code and data used to generate Fig. 3 are available on GitHub at https://github.com/ConesaLab/Perspective_Multi-Omics_Integration.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation with grant number BES-2016-076994 to A.A.-L.

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Author notes

  1. Ana Conesa

    Present address: Institute for Integrative Systems Biology, Spanish National Research Council, Valencia, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Statistics, Operations Research and Quality, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Sonia Tarazona & Angeles Arzalluz-Luque

  2. Microbiology and Cell Science Department, Institute for Food and Agricultural Research, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Ana Conesa

  3. Genetics Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Ana Conesa

Authors
  1. Sonia Tarazona
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  2. Angeles Arzalluz-Luque
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  3. Ana Conesa
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Contributions

A.C. drafted the structure of the manuscript and integrated author contributions. A.A.-L., S.T. and A.C. drafted the manuscript, reviewed the literature, contributed to figures and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana Conesa.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Computational Science thanks Casey Greene and Terry Speed for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Handling editor: Fernando Chirigati, in collaboration with the Nature Computational Science team.

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Tarazona, S., Arzalluz-Luque, A. & Conesa, A. Undisclosed, unmet and neglected challenges in multi-omics studies. Nat Comput Sci 1, 395–402 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00086-z

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