Search PubMedSearch

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Biological Science Disciplines”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Open and sustainable AI: challenges, opportunities and the road ahead in the life sciences.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has seen transformative breakthroughs in the life sciences, expanding possibilities to interpret biological information at an unprecedented capacity. To maximize return on growing investments and accelerate progress, it is urgent to address long-standing research challenges arising from the rapid adoption of AI methods. We review the erosion of trust in AI outputs driven by poor reusability and reproducibility, and highlight their impact on environmental sustainability. Furthermore, we discuss the fragmented components of the AI ecosystem and lack of guiding pathways to support open and sustainable AI model development. In response, this Perspective introduces practical open and sustainable AI recommendations mapped to over 300 ecosystem components and provides guiding implementation pathways. Our work connects researchers with relevant AI resources, facilitating the implementation of sustainable, reusable and reproducible AI. Built upon community consensus and aligned to existing efforts, these outputs will aid future policy development and structured pathways for guiding AI implementation.

Artificial Intelligence

Pithos - a scalable and secure data container for FAIR-compliant research data management in life sciences.

Modern research techniques have led to exponential growth in the volume and complexity of scientific data. Consequently, managing these volumes securely and efficiently has become a major challenge. While all research domains face these challenges, life science research is particularly affected because current approaches often rely on a large set of different file formats, with metadata stored in separated databases or spreadsheets. This leads to fragmented datasets, orphaned data, and compromised research reproducibility. Traditional solutions also force researchers to choose between security and accessibility, with encrypted files preventing selective access and indexed formats lacking adequate security for sensitive data. These limitations are particularly problematic in large-scale genomic studies where researchers must decompress multi-gigabyte files to access specific regions, creating computational bottlenecks and inefficient network usage when working with cloud-stored datasets. We introduce Pithos, a next-generation file format specifically designed for scientific data management in distributed cloud environments. The format uses content-defined chunking to enable efficient deduplication across distributed storage systems, thereby reducing storage costs and bandwidth requirements. The append-only structure ensures data immutability and allows for incremental updates without compromising content. Benchmark results show that Pithos outperforms existing solutions in read and write performance, with comparable or improved storage efficiency.

Biological Science Disciplines

PanForest: predicting genes in genomes using random forests.

MOTIVATION: The presence or absence of some genes in a genome can influence whether other genes are likely to be present or absent. Understanding these gene co-occurrence and avoidance patterns reveals fundamental principles of genome organization, with applications ranging from evolutionary reconstruction to rational design of synthetic genomes. RESULTS: PanForest, presented here, uses random forest classifiers to predict the presence and absence of genes in genomes from the set of other genes present. Performance statistics output by PanForest reveal how predictable each gene's presence or absence is, based on the presence or absence of other genes in the genome. Further, PanForest produces statistics indicating the importance of each gene in predicting the presence or absence of each other gene. The PanForest software can run serially or in parallel, thereby facilitating the analysis of pangenomes at Network of Life scale.A pangenome of 12 741 accessory genes in 1000 Escherichia coli genomes was analysed in around 5 h using eight processors. To demonstrate PanForest's utility, we present a case study and show that certain genes associated with resistance to antimicrobial drugs reliably predict the presence or absence of other genes associated with resistance to the same drug. Further, we highlight several associations between those genes and others not known to be associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR), or associated with resistance to other drugs. We envisage PanForest's use in studies from multiple disciplines concerning the dynamics of gene distributions in pangenomes ranging from biomedical science and synthetic biology to molecular ecology. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The software if freely available with a full manual and can be found with at www.github.com/alanbeavan/PanForest DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17865482.

Software

Ross River virus transmission, infection, and disease: two and a half decades of research progress-an updated cross-disciplinary review.

SUMMARYRoss River virus (RRV) causes the most mosquito-borne disease notifications in Australia and a considerable burden of non-fatal, yet frequently prolonged rheumatic illness across the Australia-Pacific region, reflected in thousands of notifications each year and notable economic and quality-of-life losses. Research on RRV spans multiple disciplines, encompassing viral genomics, immunopathology, transmission ecology, epidemiology, entomology, and environmental science. This review synthesizes two decades of cross-disciplinary investigations to present an integrated perspective on the biological, clinical, ecological, and environmental dimensions of RRV infection. By consolidating findings from diverse fields, the review enhances understanding of the complex factors influencing RRV transmission and disease outcomes throughout its endemic range.

Humans