Today’s blog focuses on this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC). GSoC is an international program founded by Google in 2005 with the purpose of bringing together open-source organisations, and developers interested in contributing to open-source software and getting an exposure to real-world software development techniques. Host organisations list project ideas, and applicants discuss these ideas directly with mentors from the organisations and devise a project proposal to Google, who issue a small stipend to successful applicants.

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We’re pleased to announce the release of Ensembl 101, and the corresponding release of Ensembl Genomes 48. The highlights of this release include an update of the human gene annotation and new population frequency data along with 39 new genomes including a new sheep reference and crop cultivars.

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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic presents a serious challenge to healthcare, economies and societies across the globe, one that has demanded an unprecedented scientific response. Projects across multiple disciplines are now re-directing their usual analytical efforts to meet this challenge head-on, and GENCODE are no exception. Our project produces human gene annotation, and we’re contributing to this scientific effort by re-examining human genes that may be relevant to viral infection and COVID-19 disease. We hope this work will support further research along these lines. For example, updated gene annotation could benefit studies to find disease-linked variants in patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms, including work by Genomics England and others.

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We are very excited to announce the release of Ensembl 100, along with Ensembl Genomes 47! Time has really flown for us. We moved from our beginnings as a browser with just one genome 20 years ago to an integrated resource for many species and data types in 2020. In this release we continue to scale up, bringing you 29 new genomes and a lot more.

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We’re pleased to announce the release of Ensembl 99, and the corresponding release of Ensembl Genomes 46. Along with updates of human gene annotation and variation data, we have a menagerie of new and updated vertebrate species in Ensembl plus a whole set of new plants, mosquitos and flies in Ensembl Genomes.

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