Yanqing Wang

The BIG Data Center at Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences provides freely open access to a suite of database resources in support of worldwide research activities in both academia and industry. With the vast amounts of omics data generated at ever-greater scales and rates, the BIG Data Center is continually expanding, updating and enriching its core database resources through big-data integration and value-added curation, including BioCode (a repository archiving bioinformatics tool codes), BioProject (a biological project library), BioSample (a biological sample library), Genome Sequence Archive (GSA, a data repository for archiving raw sequence reads), Genome Warehouse (GWH, a centralized resource housing genome-scale data), Genome Variation Map (GVM, a public repository of genome variations), Gene Expression Nebulas (GEN, a database of gene expression profiles based on RNA-Seq data), Methylation Bank (MethBank, an integrated databank of DNA methylomes), and Science Wikis (a series of biological knowledge wikis for community annotations). In addition, three featured web services are provided, viz., BIG Search (search as a service; a scalable inter-domain text search engine), BIG SSO (single sign-on as a service; a user access control system to gain access to multiple independent systems with a single ID and password) and Gsub (submission as a service; a unified submission service for all relevant resources). All of these resources are publicly accessible through the home page of the BIG Data Center at http://bigd.big.ac.cn.

Genomic data serve as an invaluable resource for unraveling the intricacies of the higher plant systems, including the constituent elements within and among species. Through various efforts in genomic data archiving, integrative analysis and value-added curation, the National Genomics Data Center (NGDC), which is a part of the China National Center for Bioinformation (CNCB), has successfully established and currently maintains a vast amount of database resources. This dedicated initiative of the NGDC facilitates a data-rich ecosystem that greatly strengthens and supports genomic research efforts. Here, we present a comprehensive overview of central repositories dedicated to archiving, presenting, and sharing plant omics data, introduce knowledgebases focused on variants or gene-based functional insights, highlight species-specific multiple omics database resources, and briefly review the online application tools. We intend that this review can be used as a guide map for plant researchers wishing to select effective data resources from the NGDC for their specific areas of study. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42994-023-00134-4.

Tumor vaccine inducing effective and perdurable antitumor immunity has a great potential for cancer prevention and therapy. The key indicator for a successful tumor vaccine is to boost the immune system to produce more memory T cells. Although many tumor vaccines have been designed in the past two decades, few of them involve actively regulating immune memory CD8+T cells. The behavior of tumor-associated antigens (TAA) in stimulating the immune system is related to the formation of immune memory. At the same time, the metabolic pattern of memory CD8+T cells changed significantly compared to effector T cells. Here we present a tumor vaccine vector (TA-Met@MS) by encapsulating tumor antigen (TA, the whole tumor cell antigen induced with photothermal-therapy (PTT) as a TAA model), metformin (Met, an activator of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)) and Hollow gold nanospheres (HAuNS, with photothermal conversion effect in the near infrared (NIR) region) into poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microspheres. TA via the treatment with PTT showed high immunogenicity and immune-adjuvant effectiveness. We found that NIR light-mediated photothermal effect lead to a pulsed-release behavior of TA and Met from the microspheres, based on their sustained release. The released TA regulated primary T cell expansion and contraction, and stimulated the production of effector T cells at the early immunization stage. The metabolic behavior of the cells was then intervened from glycolysis into fatty acids oxidation (FAO) through the activation of AMPK mediated by the released Met, which enhanced cell survival and facilitated the differentiation of memory CD8+T cells. Our study may present a valuable insight to design tumor vaccine for enhanced cancer prevention and therapy.