Nan Qin

TL;DR: The Illumina-based metagenomic sequencing, assembly and characterization of 3.3 million non-redundant microbial genes, derived from 576.7 gigabases of sequence, from faecal samples of 124 European individuals are described, indicating that the entire cohort harbours between 1,000 and 1,150 prevalent bacterial species and each individual at least 160 such species.

TL;DR: The gut microbiome in liver cirrhosis is characterized by comparing 98 patients and 83 healthy control individuals and on the basis of only 15 biomarkers, a highly accurate patient discrimination index is created and validated on an independent cohort, suggesting microbiota-targeted biomarkers may be a powerful tool for diagnosis of different diseases.

TL;DR: This study establishes that five of the cucumber's seven chromosomes arose from fusions of ten ancestral chromosomes after divergence from Cucumis melo, and identifies 686 gene clusters related to phloem function.

TL;DR: Using next-generation sequencing technology alone, a draft sequence of the giant panda genome is generated and assembled, indicating that its bamboo diet might be more dependent on its gut microbiome than its own genetic composition.

TL;DR: A high level of linkage disequilibrium in the soybean genome is identified, suggesting that marker-assisted breeding of soybean will be less challenging than map-based cloning and to facilitate future breeding and quantitative trait analysis.