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Comparative studies struggle to balance technical properties with the need to obtain samples from multiple species. The authors argue for extensive record keeping and reporting of metadata to minimize the effect of confounders and increase the robustness of inferences from these studies.
Two papers in Nature Chemical Biology describe new methods for transcriptome-mapping of N6-methyladenosine (m6A), a covalent modification of RNA. In m6A-SEAL, modified adenosines can be tagged with different functional groups for different applications, whereas m6A-label-seq uses metabolic labelling to achieve single-nucleotide resolution.
A study reports on the suitability of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a platform for the assembly and maintenance of diverse RNA virus genomes, including SARS-CoV-2.
A new study in Cell describes the CRISPR array repair lineage tracing (CARLIN) engineered mouse line that genomically encodes all the components for CRISPR-based lineage tracking at single-cell resolution.
Genetic improvement of production traits in aquaculture has great potential to help meet the rising seafood demands driven by human population growth. The authors review how genomics is being applied to aquaculture species at all stages of the domestication process to optimize selective breeding.
Understanding developmental trajectories has recently been enabled by progress in modern lineage-tracing methods that combine genetic lineage analysis with omics-based characterization of cell states (particularly transcriptomes). In this Review, Wagner and Klein discuss the conceptual underpinnings, experimental strategies and analytical considerations of these approaches, as well as the biological insights gained.
Understanding evolutionary relationships between species requires the generation of accurate phylogenetic trees. In this Review, Kapli, Yang and Telford discuss the principles, steps and computational tools for phylogenetic tree building. They describe the impact of burgeoning genomic datasets as well as the diverse sources of errors and how they can be mitigated.
