The year has kicked off with a burst of good news and exciting projects at ConesaLab, and we couldn’t be happier (especially now that January is finally over—who knew one month could feel like half a year? Hehe).
The SQANTI-verse is growing faster than ever with new players in the field. Carol has launched the pre-release of SQANTI-browser, the “all-seeing eye.” With this new tool, you can combine the power of SQANTI with the UCSC genome browser to visualize your transcripts alongside their respective structural categories. Moreover, you can integrate the SQANTI3 classification table to filter data based on any combination of columns and parameters. It’s truly a game-changer!
Additionally, SQANTI3 has a new pre-release: Version 6! We’ve designated this as a pre-release because of significant updates to the QC and Rescue modules. Since things might get bumpy during the initial “stress test” phase, we’re taking the professional route here. We need you, our community, to try and break it as hard as possible so our dear Pablo can fix it. Remember: what doesn’t kill the code makes it stronger!
Beyond software, we are thrilled to welcome Nazli Ucar to the group! Nazli is a PhD student who started in Valencia, moved to Boston, but kept the Terreta in her heart. She’s decided to dive into the world of bioinformatics, and what better place than here? We just hope we don’t fry her brain with all our “geeking around.”
The papers are also rolling in! Victor, Tian, Fabian and Alejandro are working hard on revisions for STIMA, TUSCO and the Call&Join. You can find this last two on bioRxiv as they prepare for formal submission. These are great milestones as we continue to expand the team’s publication catalog.
It hasn’t been all work and no play. Since we were scattered during December, we postponed our Christmas Lunch to a New Year’s Lunch (any excuse to celebrate!). We visited a wonderful traditional Valencian restaurant near the lab and fell in love with the Huerta. Food and drinks were in overabundance, followed by a lovely afternoon coffee and beer in the main square of Burjassot. Carlos, however, left a bit humbled after Victor and Julen thoroughly destroyed him at cards…
Speaking of Carlos, we hope he’s surviving the cold and rain in England! The last week of January was bittersweet as we said goodbye to him—though only for a few months (I’ll stop being dramatic now). He has headed to the Earlham Institute for a PhD secondment with Wilfried (a fellow member of the LongTREC Consortium) to put the finishing touches on SQANTI-Single Cell alongside our beloved Fran. This stay has been made possible thanks to the EMBOO grants!
To top off the month, we are incredibly enthusiastic about the two new COCREA projects we’ve been awarded. Part of a CSIC initiative, these projects promote and fund collaborations between research institutions and the private sector.
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Pablo will be working hand-in-hand with Endorenew to analyze endometrial microbiomes and single-cell data from women with fertility issues, advancing the mission of improving women’s health.
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Our second project will be a collaboration with our friends at LongSeq where we will aim to develop a new bioinformatics tool to harness the power of NanoPore sequecing and epitranscriptomics