Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Numerous adaptations have allowed them to exploit all major ecosystems. They play vital roles on our planet and are both beneficial (pollinators) and harmful (agricultural pests and vectors of pathogens that cause diseases in humans). Over the past decade, rapid developments in sequencing technologies and assembly tools combined with the reduction in sequencing costs have moved the bottleneck in arthropod genomics from data generation to inference of biological function. Ongoing progress in genomics data generation is now facilitating the technologies to manipulate genomes of non-Drosophila arthropods. This special issue invites research on genomics of all arthropods and includes topics on gene editing, functional genomics, population genomics, and comparative genomics.
Three major challenges have been identified in entomological research: public health significance, arthropods of agricultural relevance, and invasive species that impact either public/veterinary health or agriculture. Functional genomics is playing an important role in addressing these grand challenges by using the vast data generated by genomic and transcriptomic projects. A key characteristic of functional genomics studies is their genome-wide approach to the fundamental questions rather than a more traditional "gene-by-gene" approach. As new data are generated to understand arthropod biology and arthropod-borne animal/plant diseases, there will be numerous discoveries worthy of publication. The special issue focuses on new insights gleaned from analyzing arthropod genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, epigenomes, and other genome-wide approaches.
In this Research Topic we welcome the submission of original research articles, mini- and full review, perspectives and opinion articles on the following, but not limited, aspects:
• Research related to genetics and epigenetics of arthropods including arthropod vectors of disease, model organisms, and those of agricultural relevance
• Genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, population genomics, and other omics techniques
• RNAi (RNA interference), genome editing and other related areas.
• New techniques to overcome the unique challenges of working with arthropods
Keywords: Arthropods, Vectors, Pathogens, Genome, Gene editing, RNAi, Transcriptomics, Proteomics, Genomics
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
