Biodiversity research in the "big data" era: GigaScience and Pensoft work together to publish the most data-rich species description.

With the publication of the first eukaryotic species description, combining transcriptomic, DNA barcoding, and micro-CT imaging data, GigaScience and Pensoft demonstrate how classical taxonomic description of a new species can be enhanced by applying new generation molecular methods, and novel computing and imaging technologies. This 'holistic' approach in taxonomic description of a new species of cave-dwelling centipede is published in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ), with coordinated data release in the GigaScience GigaDB database.

Metagenomic analysis: the challenge of the data bonanza.

Several thousand metagenomes have already been sequenced, and this number is set to grow rapidly in the forthcoming years as the uptake of high-throughput sequencing technologies continues. Hand-in-hand with this data bonanza comes the computationally overwhelming task of analysis. Herein, we describe some of the bioinformatic approaches currently used by metagenomics researchers to analyze their data, the issues they face and the steps that could be taken to help overcome these challenges.