The sea represents a major source of biodiversity. It exhibits many different ecosystems in a huge variety of environmental conditions where marine organisms have evolved with extensive diversification of structures and functions, making the marine environment a treasure trove of molecules with potential for biotechnological applications and innovation in many different areas. Rapid progress of the omics sciences has revealed novel opportunities to advance the knowledge of biological systems, paving the way for an unprecedented revolution in the field and expanding marine research from model organisms to an increasing number of marine species. Multi-level approaches based on molecular investigations at genomic, metagenomic, transcriptomic, metatranscriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic levels are essential to discover marine resources and further explore key molecular processes involved in their production and action. As a consequence, omics approaches, accompanied by the associated bioinformatic resources and computational tools for molecular analyses and modeling, are boosting the rapid advancement of biotechnologies. In this review, we provide an overview of the most relevant bioinformatic resources and major approaches, highlighting perspectives and bottlenecks for an appropriate exploitation of these opportunities for biotechnology applications from marine resources.

Abiotic stresses are among the principal limiting factors for productivity in agriculture. In the current era of continuous climate changes, the understanding of the molecular aspects involved in abiotic stress response in plants is a priority. The rise of -omics approaches provides key strategies to promote effective research in the field, facilitating the investigations from reference models to an increasing number of species, tolerant and sensitive genotypes. Integrated multilevel approaches, based on molecular investigations at genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics levels, are now feasible, expanding the opportunities to clarify key molecular aspects involved in responses to abiotic stresses. To this aim, bioinformatics has become fundamental for data production, mining and integration, and necessary for extracting valuable information and for comparative efforts, paving the way to the modeling of the involved processes. We provide here an overview of bioinformatics resources for research on plant abiotic stresses, describing collections from -omics efforts in the field, ranging from raw data to complete databases or platforms, highlighting opportunities and still open challenges in abiotic stress research based on -omics technologies.

Background: Venom is one of the most important sources of regulation factors used by parasitic Hymenoptera to redirect host physiology in favour of the developing offspring. This has stimulated a number of studies, both at functional and “omics” level, which, however, are still quite limited for ectophagous parasitoids that permanently paralyze and suppress their victims (i.e., idiobiont parasitoids).Results: Here we present a combined transcriptomic and proteomic study of the venom of the generalist idiobiont waspBracon nigricans, an ectophagous larval parasitoid of different lepidopteran species, for which we recently described the host regulation strategy and the functional role of the venom in the induction of physiological changes in parasitized hosts. The experimental approach used led to the identification of the main components ofB. nigricansvenom involved in host regulation. Enzymes degrading lipids, proteins and carbohydrates are likely involved in the mobilization of storage nutrients from the fat body and may concurrently be responsible for the release of neurotoxic fatty acids inducing paralysis, and for the modulation of host immune responses.Conclusion: The present work contributes to fill the gap of knowledge on venom composition in ectoparasitoid wasps, and, along with our previous physiological study on this species, provides the foundation on which to develop a functional model of host regulation, based both on physiological and molecular data. This paves the way towards a better understanding of parasitism evolution in the basal lineages of Hymenoptera and to the possible exploitation of venom as source of bioinsecticidal molecules.

Environmental metagenomics is a challenging approach that is exponentially spreading in the scientific community to investigate taxonomic diversity and possible functions of the biological components. The massive amount of sequence data produced, often endowed with rich environmental metadata, needs suitable computational tools to fully explore the embedded information. Bioinformatics plays a key role in providing methodologies to manage, process and mine molecular data, integrated with environmental metagenomics collections. One such relevant example is represented by the Tara Ocean Project. We considered the Tara 16S miTAGs released by the consortium, representing raw sequences from a shotgun metagenomics approach with similarities to 16S rRNA genes. We generated assembled 16S rDNA sequences, which were classified according to their lengths, the possible presence of chimeric reads, the putative taxonomic affiliation. The dataset was included in GLOSSary (the GLobal Ocean 16S Subunit web accessible resource), a bioinformatics platform to organize environmental metagenomics data. The aims of this work were: i) to present alternative computational approaches to manage challenging metagenomics data; ii) to set up user friendly web-based platforms to allow the integration of environmental metagenomics sequences and of the associated metadata; iii) to implement an appropriate bioinformatics platform supporting the analysis of 16S rDNA sequences exploiting reference datasets, such as the SILVA database. We organized the data in a next-generation NoSQL “schema-less” database, allowing flexible organization of large amounts of data and supporting native geospatial queries. A web interface was developed to permit an interactive exploration and a visual geographical localization of the data, either raw miTAG reads or 16S contigs, from our processing pipeline. Information on unassembled sequences is also available. The taxonomic affiliations of contigs and miTAGs, and the spatial distribution of the sampling sites and their associated sequence libraries, as they are contained in the Tara metadata, can be explored by a query interface, which allows both textual and visual investigations. In addition, all the sequence data were made available for a dedicated BLAST-based web application alongside the SILVA collection. GLOSSary provides an expandable bioinformatics environment, able to support the scientific community in current and forthcoming environmental metagenomics analyses.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are greatly facilitating the sequencing of whole genomes leading to the production of different gene annotations, released often from both reference resources (such as NCBI or Ensembl) and specific consortia. All these annotations are in general very heterogeneous and not cross-linked, providing ambiguous knowledge to the users. In order to give a quick view of what is available, and trying to centralize all the genomic information of reference marine species, we set up GENOMA (GENOmes for MArine biology). GENOMA is a multilevel platform that includes all the available genome assemblies and gene annotations about 12 species (Acanthaster planci, Branchiostoma floridae, Ciona robusta, Ciona savignyi, Gasterosteus aculeatus, Octopus bimaculoides, Patiria miniata, Phaeodactylum tricornutum, Ptychodera flava and Saccoglossus kowalevskii). Each species has a dedicated JBroswe and web page, where is summarized the comparison between the different genome versions and gene annotations available, together with the possibility to directly download all the information. Moreover, an interactive table including the union of different gene annotations is also consultable on-line. Finally, a query page system that allows to search specific features in one or more annotations simultaneously, is embedded in the platform. GENOMA is publicly available at http://bioinfo.szn.it/genoma/.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are greatly facilitating the sequencing of whole genomes leading to the production of different gene annotations, released often from both reference resources (such as NCBI or Ensembl) and specific consortia. All these annotations are in general very heterogeneous and not cross-linked, providing ambiguous knowledge to the users. In order to give a quick view of what is available, and trying to centralize all the genomic information of reference marine species, we set up GENOMA (GENOmes for MArine biology). GENOMA is a multilevel platform that includes all the available genome assemblies and gene annotations about 12 species (Acanthaster planci, Branchiostoma floridae, Ciona robusta, Ciona savignyi, Gasterosteus aculeatus, Octopus bimaculoides, Patiria miniata, Phaeodactylum tricornutum, Ptychodera flava and Saccoglossus kowalevskii). Each species has a dedicated JBroswe and web page, where is summarized the comparison between the different genome versions and gene annotations available, together with the possibility to directly download all the information. Moreover, an interactive table including the union of different gene annotations is also consultable on-line. Finally, a query page system that allows to search specific features in one or more annotations simultaneously, is embedded in the platform. GENOMA is publicly available at http://bioinfo.szn.it/genoma/.