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We’re reimagining scientific publication — welcome to the first draft! This entire effort is an experiment in and of itself. For more on our strategy and an overview of this initial iteration of the platform, read more and provide critical input.
Follow along as our projects progress
Project narratives are running logs that introduce a project’s goals and put each new pub into context.
Ticks as treasure troves: Molecular discovery in new organisms
View ProjectAnnotation: Mapping the functional landscape of protein families across biology
View ProjectGenetics: Decoding evolutionary drivers across biology
View ProjectMicroscopy: Visually interrogating the natural world
View ProjectSoftware: Implementing useful and innovative computing
View ProjectReimagining scientific publishing
View ProjectExploring bacteriophage nucleic acid chemistries
View ProjectDissecting mechanisms of environmental adaptation in protists
View ProjectUnderstanding the evolution of actin-binding proteins across diverse species
View ProjectSpatial genomics: Tracking biomolecules across space and time
View ProjectComment on our pubs
Pubs are detailed pieces of communication about research.
Published: Aug 25, 2023
We implemented a lightweight method to identify viruses in 342 human brain bulk and single-cell sequencing data sets, and identified two glioblastoma cells from a single patient that contained deltapolyomavirus sequences.
Published: Aug 15, 2023
Hoping to find proteins that alter physiology in useful ways, we screened venom data sets for toxins fused to domains with additional functionality. We identified candidates, but struggled to infer any novel functions, and none seem well-conserved across venomous species.
Published: Jul 20, 2023
We are interested in neuroactive metabolites that influence animal behavior. Some fungi have horizontally transferred neuroactive metabolite pathways between species. We used a horizontal gene transfer detection pipeline to screen for novel fungal genes tied to neuroactivity.
Published: Jul 20, 2023
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the exchange of DNA between species. It can lead to the acquisition of new gene functions, so finding HGT events can reveal genome novelty. preHGT is a pipeline that uses multiple existing methods to quickly screen for transferred genes.
Published: Jul 19, 2023
We sampled cheese microbial communities to discover bacteriophages with unusual genome chemistries. We isolated 114 bacterial host strains and 17 phages, and identified one phage with a probable arabinose hypermodification of hydroxymethylcytosine.
Published: Jul 19, 2023
The increasingly large number of sequences available in public databases makes searches slower and slower. We clustered the NCBI non-redundant protein database and calculated taxonomic info for each cluster. This collapses similar sequences and reduces the database by over half.
Published: Jun 23, 2023
We’re crossing C. reinhardtii and C. smithii algae for high-throughput genotype-phenotype mapping. In preparation, we’re comparing the parents to uncover unique species-specific phenotypes.
Published: Jun 15, 2023
Even with many tools available, categorizing species is tough. We used data from Raman spectroscopy, a form of label-free imaging, to infer phylogenetic patterns among several dozen diverse microbial taxa, offering a non-destructive and rapid way to dissect species relationships.
Published: May 26, 2023
We want to seamlessly process and summarize metagenomics data from Illumina or Nanopore technologies. We built a Nextflow workflow that handles common metagenomics tasks and produces useful outputs and intuitive visualizations.
Published: May 03, 2023
Constraining motile microorganisms for live imaging often requires costly microfluidics or optical traps to keep them in view. We used patterned stamps and agar to make versatile, inexpensive “microchambers” and offer a way to predict the right chamber size for a given organism.
Published: Apr 26, 2023
Seeing how microbes are organized within a community can inspire hypotheses about how species interact with each other. We used HiPR-FISH spatial imaging to look at the distribution of microbes within five distinct microbial communities growing on the surface of aged cheeses.
Published: Apr 11, 2023
We want to swiftly generate genome assemblies and produce quality control statistics to gauge the need for more curation. We built a Nextflow pipeline that assembles Illumina, Nanopore, or PacBio sequencing reads for a single organism and runs QC checks on the resulting assembly.
Published: Mar 30, 2023
We generated a whole-genome assembly for the lone star tick to serve as a reference for downstream efforts where whole-genome maps are required. We created our assembly using pooled DNA from salivary glands of 50 adult female ticks that we sequenced using PacBio HiFi reads.
Published: Mar 29, 2023
Treating P. tricornutum cells with serine endopeptidases or certain cytoskeletal inhibitors induces the formation of cell wall-free protoplasts and suggests a novel role for actin and myosin in preventing protoplast formation.
Published: Mar 14, 2023
We struggled to isolate enough phage mRNA for HPLC as we searched for new nucleoside chemistries. Ribodepleting the abundant extracted rRNA introduced contaminating DNA, and we were still left with more bacterial mRNA than phage transcripts. We suggest an alternative approach.
Published: Mar 11, 2023
How do you approach getting a microbiome set up in a new lab? We’re sharing protocols for how we collected, stocked, and sequenced a set of cheese rind microbiomes and generated a high-quality metagenomics resource for future computational studies.
Published: Mar 07, 2023
A workflow orchestration framework can streamline repeatable tasks and make workflows broadly usable. From several options, we chose Nextflow due to the ease of deploying across platforms, vibrant nf-core community, and ability to manage and monitor workflows with Nextflow Tower.
Published: Feb 21, 2023
The sourmash Python package produces many outputs that describe the content and similarity of sequencing data. We developed a new R package, sourmashconsumr, that lets a wider range of users easily load, analyze, and visualize those outputs in R.
Published: Feb 21, 2023
seqqc is a Nextflow pipeline for quality control of short- or long-read sequencing data. It quickly assesses the quality of sequencing data so that it can be posted to a public repository before analysis for biological insights. Faster open data, faster knowledge for everyone.
Published: Dec 19, 2022
This pub details a process for phage amplification and concentration, DNA extraction, and HPLC and MS analysis of phage nucleosides. We optimized the approach with model phages known to use non-canonical nucleosides in their DNA, but plan to apply it for other phages.
Published: Dec 04, 2022
Long protrusions from several microalgal species appear to help cells move, capture prey, transport mitochondria and chloroplasts, and more. Are they filopodia that evolved abilities more like other actin- or microtubule-based structures, or are they something new?
Published: Dec 01, 2022
The process of deciding whether a candidate actin homolog represents a “true” actin is tricky. We propose clear and data-driven criteria to define actin that highlight the functional importance of this protein while accounting for phylogenetic diversity.
Published: Oct 14, 2022
Quantifying movement is a powerful window into cellular functions. However, cells can generate movement through a variety of complex mechanisms. Here, we generate a flexible framework for comparing an especially variable type of motility: cellular crawling.
Published: Aug 23, 2022
Cells can be highly motile, moving in and out of a microscope’s field of view. Understanding complex life cycles is difficult without continuous observation. To overcome this challenge, we’ve developed a 3D-printed microchamber device to confine cells for long-term visualization.
Published: May 31, 2022
The way you generate a reference database has a real impact on the completeness and results of proteomics experiments.
Published: May 31, 2022
Building on the open-source platform PubPub, we’re sharing the first iteration of our publishing website. In addition to posting our first set of research pubs, we’re documenting our progress in developing this new system for sharing science and hope you’ll provide feedback.
Published: May 31, 2022
Researchers studying any organism with genomic data can follow this simple walkthrough to create sets of barcoded probes for the multiplexed FISH technique called MERFISH. We’re sharing interactive code notebooks that can be adapted to design barcoded FISH probes for any species.
Published: May 31, 2022
If you’re interested in generating proteomics data but your organism of interest doesn’t have a sequenced genome to use as a reference database, it is straightforward and useful to collect a transcriptome instead.
Questions
Read our FAQ and our publishing philosophy. For technical issues, visit the PubPub Help Community. If you need extra help after browsing the help site and forums, contact [email protected].
