News & Comment

On 16 September 2020, when the news of José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta’s untimely passing broke, the scientific community was left in dismay.

Given an opportunity to chronicle the experience of traversing America as a Black man, I elect to convey a less frequently told vantage point. This is the perspective of the ‘accomplished’ bootless.

Genetic tools can help uncover evolutionary histories, migration patterns and admixture events of domesticated animals and their wild ancestors. The genetic window into the past can help shape breeding strategies and inform animal agricultural practices that should lead to a more resilient and sustainable future.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a global rush to uncover basic biological mechanisms to inform effective vaccine and drug development. Despite the novelty of the virus, global sequencing efforts have already identified genomic variation across isolates. To enable easy exploration and spatial visualization of the potential implications of SARS-CoV-2 mutations in infection, host immunity and drug development, we have developed COVID-3D (http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/covid3d/).

The WashU Virus Genome Browser is a web-based portal for efficient visualization of viral ‘omics’ data in the context of a variety of annotation tracks and host infection responses. The browser features both a phylogenetic-tree-based view and a genomic-coordinate, track-based view in which users can analyze the sequence features of viral genomes, sequence diversity among viral strains, genomic sites of diagnostic tests, predicted immunogenic epitopes and a continuously updated repository of publicly available genomic datasets.

The UCSC SARS-CoV-2 Genome Browser (https://genome.ucsc.edu/covid19.html) is an adaptation of our popular genome-browser visualization tool for this virus, containing many annotation tracks and new features, including conservation with similar viruses, immune epitopes, RT–PCR and sequencing primers and CRISPR guides. We invite all investigators to contribute to this resource to accelerate research and development activities globally.

Increasing amounts of crop genomic resources, along with new technical achievements in genome analysis, can facilitate basic and translational research in agriculture, and expand the ability to meet the global challenge of food production and security.

Gene nomenclature can be complicated, and the official naming of genes requires rational standards to avoid confusion and to maximize clarity. The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee has released updated guidelines for the naming of human genes, and we encourage the community to adopt these recommendations.

Standardized gene naming is crucial for effective communication about genes, and as genomics becomes increasingly important in health care, the need for a consistent language to refer to human genes becomes ever more essential. Here, we present the current HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) guidelines for naming not only protein-coding genes but also RNA genes and pseudogenes, and we outline the changes in approach and ethos that have resulted from the discoveries of the past few decades.

When the status quo in science continues to perpetuate ingrained systems of discrimination, inequality and racism, the beneficiaries of these systems must not only reexamine their collective practices but also redress historical injustices through consequential, concrete actions that will lead to change. We cannot focus only on the first steps of listening and learning to build a better, fairer scientific community. We at Nature Genetics fully commit to pledging our energy and efforts toward long-term goals explicitly designed to fundamentally transform how science and its dissemination are conducted.

One of the many consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic is the need for the scientific community to adapt to the cancellation of conferences and events because of travel restrictions and social-distancing guidelines. We have seen a very swift conversion to online meetings, which have allowed for this established form of science communication to continue and opened new avenues for innovation in the reporting of research and discussion of ideas.

The promise of personalized medicine lies in the tailored treatment of individual patients, a process requiring detailed phenotypic and genetic information. Although the widespread collection of such data can help to advance the implementation of precision healthcare, the genomic sequencing data being amassed also include private information that could potentially be used as a basis for genetic discrimination. It is important for the genetics community to be aware of these risks and to contribute to policies designed to monitor and mitigate threats to the equitable treatment of individuals or populations on the basis of genetics.

In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines for the naming of new human infectious diseases. The current global outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus underscores the need to be accurate with our language, particularly as it relates to pandemics.

Genetic discrimination is one of the most pervasive challenges resulting from research and development in human genetics. To collaboratively study and prevent this ethical issue, we established an international Genetic Discrimination Observatory comprising a network of researchers and stakeholders from more than 19 jurisdictions.

The African Orphan Crops Consortium promotes the strategic, genome-enabled improvement of under-researched crops for biodiversity-based, nutritious food solutions in Africa. The African Plant Breeding Academy empowers the continent’s plant breeders to apply advanced genetic approaches and shared genetic solutions to the task of tailoring the immense diversity of underutilized crops to the needs of Africa’s producers, processors and consumers.

The Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium project, led by the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), coordinated the sequencing and analysis of 2,583 tumor whole genomes across 38 cancer types. This impressively large project, comprising many working groups focusing on various molecular or genetic features of cancer, has generated valuable data for the cancer research community that will continue to be mined for many years to come.

Given that it is based on heredity and has the ability to trace connections, genetics as a scientific discipline should be among those most attuned to diversity and global perspectives. Indigenous communities and scientists have much to contribute to genetics research, and they are making their voices heard. We celebrate these essential members of our larger genetics community, and we look forward to working together to learn from past examples, meet present challenges and support future opportunities.

As we usher in a new year of a new decade and ponder what the future will bring for the genetics field, we wish to reflect on some specific areas related to diversity, privacy and genome editing that require attention and vigilance from the community.