Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
There is an increasing demand for next-generation sequencing technologies that rapidly deliver high volumes of accurate genome information at a low cost. This Review provides a guide to the features of the different platforms, and describes the recent advances in this fast-moving area.
How did the intricate adaptive immune system of mammals arise? New clues have recently emerged from studies of the immune systems of non-mammalian vertebrates. Here, these findings are integrated with current knowledge of macroevolutionary events and selective pressures.
The recent increase in available human population genetic data is revealing signatures of selection at immunity-related genes. This Review discusses how studies of genome evolution are contributing to our understanding of how pathogens have shaped the human genome and immune response.
Vertebrate limb development is a classic developmental model. In this Review the authors discuss how existing models of this process might be integrated and might form a framework for a systems approach to understanding organogenesis.
Recent transcriptomic studies have revealed that diverse small RNAs are transcribed from the regions around gene promoters. This Review considers questions prompted by the discovery of these transcripts; for example, what is their origin and are they functional?
Until recently, large-scale transcriptome studies in bacteria and archaea were limited by technical challenges, and there was a perception that microbial transcription was relatively simple compared with eukaryotic transcription. Now, prokaryotic transcriptomics is revealing unexpected aspects of transcriptional control, genome organization and non-coding RNAs.