Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effects of Extrusion on Starch Molecular Degradation, Order–Disorder Structural Transition and Digestibility—A Review

Extrusion is a thermomechanical technology that has been widely used in the production of various starch-based foods and can transform raw materials into edible products with unique nutritional characteristics. Starch digestibility is a crucial nutritional factor that can largely determine the human postprandial glycemic response, and frequent consumption of foods with rapid starch digestibility is related to the occurrence of type 2 diabetes. The extrusion process involves starch degradation and order–disorder structural transition, which could result in large variance in starch digestibility in these foods depending on the raw material properties and processing conditions. It provides opportunities to modify starch digestibility by selecting a desirable combination of raw food materials and extrusion settings. This review firstly introduces the application of extrusion techniques in starch-based food production, while, more importantly, it discusses the effects of extrusion on the alteration of starch structures and consequentially starch digestibility in various foods. This review contains important information to generate a new generation of foods with slow starch digestibility by the extrusion technique

Database Resources of the National Genomics Data Center, China National Center for Bioinformation in 2022

The National Genomics Data Center (NGDC), part of the China National Center for Bioinformation (CNCB), provides a family of database resources to support global research in both academia and industry. With the explosively accumulated multi-omics data at ever-faster rates, CNCB-NGDC is constantly scaling up and updating its core database resources through big data archive, curation, integration and analysis. In the past year, efforts have been made to synthesize the growing data and knowledge, particularly in single-cell omics and precision medicine research, and a series of resources have been newly developed, updated and enhanced. Moreover, CNCB-NGDC has continued to daily update SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, variants, haplotypes and literature. Particularly, OpenLB, an open library of bioscience, has been established by providing easy and open access to a substantial number of abstract texts from PubMed, bioRxiv and medRxiv. In addition, Database Commons is significantly updated by cataloguing a full list of global databases, and BLAST tools are newly deployed to provide online sequence search services