The authors of the research presented in this special collection used the first description of the B73 maize genome to probe some of the most intriguing questions in genetics and plant biology. Read about maize centromeres, new insights into transposon types and distribution, the abundance of very short FLcDNAs encoding predicted peptides, and many other "genetic jewels" contained herein.

This collection was launched with the mission to share knowledge about lab organization and scientific management. Each Perspective article represents an interview with a Principal Investigator, who shares his or her experience of running a lab by discussing selected topics in an informal and personal style. By creating this collection at PLOS Computational Biology, a journal committed to open knowledge, the collection editors hope to create a dialog through which we all can learn from each other.

Without reliable methods to evaluate how the mucosal immune system responds to an experimental HIV vaccine, important information about how well that vaccine worked is missed. The HIV Mucosal Immunology Group (MIG) was established to address the challenge of assessing the impact of potential HIV vaccines on the mucosal immune system. The MIG comprises of expert scientists who are coordinating their efforts to improve mucosal sampling, specimen storage and assay technologies. This collection reports the results of those efforts, providing important, practical details on studying immune responses in the genital and rectal mucosa.

This collection focuses on a rapidly evolving field in which the study of both species-specific and ubiquitous aging mechanisms informs the biological process of aging. Yet the field is not without substantial controversy, differing views arise as we come to understand aging across model systems - from bacteria to humans.

The PLOS Medicine series on Big Food aims to examine and stimulate debate about the activities and influence of the food industry in global health. We define “Big Food” as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power. The series adopts a multi-disciplinary approach and includes critical perspectives from around the world. It represents one of first times such issues have been examined in the general medical literature.

Saba Bank is the largest submarine atoll in the Atlantic Ocean, adjacent to the nearby island of Saba, in the Netherlands Antilles. The submerged platform is ~2200 sq km, with a 50 km fringing reef crest. Large vessels traveling to and from an oil terminal on nearby St. Eustatius Island routinely anchor on Saba Bank, damaging benthic habitats. Marine biodiversity research was necessary to help inform any national and international protective measures. This collection of articles represents an international collaboration to characterize the richness, diversity, and habitat affinities of marine taxa on Saba Bank. Multibeam bathymetry, satellite imagery, scuba transects, roving surveys, remotely operated vehicles, and fish traps were used to study the biotic assemblages. This poorly studied region was found to have unusually high biodiversity, including several undescribed species.

This collection presents some of the recent advances in biogeography and taxonomy within deep-sea chemosynthetic environments: patterns, processes, and synthesis resulting from the Census of Marine Life ChEss Program (2002-2010). Over 110 ChEss researchers have studied various elements of the biogeography of species from deep-water hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, and whale falls, to oxygen minimum zones. Through their concerted efforts our knowledge of these extraordinary habitats and their faunal composition has been greatly expanded. An overall synthesis paper by the ChEss Office summarises the program and the collection contributions.

Bioinformatics is being introduced into the school curriculum earlier and earlier as the field matures. PLOS Computational Biology's Education section introduces a new collection, Bioinformatics: Starting Early, which is devoted to teaching bioinformatics in secondary schools.

'Blue marble health' is a recent concept that recognizes a paradoxical disease burden among poor people living in G20 and other wealthier countries. Socioeconomic disparities caused by income, ethnicity and relative poverty constitute a major and growing determinant of health to at-risk populations regardless of the average income of their country of residence. Neglected Tropical Diseases found among poor people in wealthy countries contribute substantially to health disparities, whilst non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and coronary artery disease, urgently require action as increasingly prevalent causes of illness and death in lower-and middle-income countries.

Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a reduction of two-thirds in the under-5 mortality rate between 1990 and 2015. Reliable estimates of child mortality are critical to the monitoring of progress toward this important goal. The UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) annually reports on country, regional and global trends in child mortality. In this collection of research articles and reviews the independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the UN IGME introduces the group's methodological innovations in estimating child mortality.The Collection is produced with support from UNICEF and the TAG of the UN IGME.

Clinical immunology is the study of diseases caused by disorders of the immune system (failure, aberrant action, and malignant growth of the cellular elements of the system), and also involves diseases where immune reactions play a part in their pathology and clinical features. The Collection has been organized into broad categories in response to the commonly articulated request from our users that we provide more structured and efficient access to papers of interest in the PLOS corpus. The Clinical Immunology Collection includes sections on Allergies & Anaphylaxis, Tumor Immunology, Immunodeficiency and Autoimmune Diseases. More sections will follow.

In this collection PLOS NTDs highlights the contributions of Indian authors, labs, and institutions to the global fight against neglected tropical diseases. It includes over 40 primary research articles reporting significant advances in the fields of epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, vaccine development and applications, and vector control.

This collection of papers highlights research performed under the auspices of the Natural Geography in Shore Areas(NaGISA) project, a component of the Census of Marine Life program. NaGISA is a collaborative effort aimed at inventorying and monitoring biodiversity in rocky bottom macroalgal and soft bottom seagrass communities from the high intertidal zone to 20 meters in depth at a global scale. The papers of this collection describe large-scale distribution patterns of assemblages associated with rocky shores around the globe, as well as specific patterns for taxa such as macroalgae, polychaetes, and echinoderms.

In response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, PLOS editors curated content from across the journals, PLOS Currents and the PLOS Blogs Network into a rapidly evolving collection of research. Like all our content, these papers are freely and openly available to download, use and reuse. Incidents such as the Ebola outbreak reinforce the importance of rapid, Open Access publishing to ensure that the latest critical data and research is accessible to those who most need it without restriction.

The ecological impacts of climate change are broad and diverse, altering species' range limits, plant phenology and growth, carbon and nutrient cycling, as well as biodiversity and extinction risk. Recent PLOS articles have used a variety of experimental and observational approaches to examine these impacts. The broad range of papers within this Collection emphasize not only the multi-faceted impacts of climate change on ecological and human systems, but also the breadth and depth of research on these subjects being reported in PLOS journals.

Ocean Science or Oceanography covers a wide range of scientific topics, including complex ecosystems, sustainability, marine organisms, ocean currents, climate change and the geology of the sea floor. In this Editor’s Picks, PLOS ONE Associate Editor Eileen Clancy selects recent PLOS publications highlighting the varied and critical research ongoing into understanding the world’s oceans. PLOS welcomes submissions in these fields.

Recognizing the need for training and education in bioinformatics and computational biology specifically targeted to biologists, PLOS Computational Biology launched its Education section in January 2006. The goals are to provide practical tutorials and background information on important computational methods used to investigate key biological questions as well as resources for training scientists at all stages of their careers.

With exciting new research opportunities comes the much needed consideration of ethical challenges. This Focus Feature, led by Philip E. Bourne, addresses the ethical challenges that accompany the use of “big data” in biology and medicine. PLOS Computational Biology "Focus Features" are a resource to encourage community engagement and discussion on a focussed topic. A Focus Feature is directed by the editors with a view to ‘shape the debate’ on a topic of interest to the computational biology community. By consisting of a small number of articles, each Focus Feature may draw on the new and old research in order to further the conversation.

The burden of HIV is heavily disproportionate in sex workers, where the high rates of partner change and their vulnerability increase the likelihood of sexual transmitted infections. This collection presents analyses of the influence of direct and indirect intervention programs aimed at interrupting this high-incidence of infection. Calls are made for a rapid scale-up of combination prevention programs and HIV care and treatment in order to improve conditions for sex workers. Publication of the collection was made possible by the generous financial support of World Bank, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through USAID; Linkages Across the Continuum of HIV Services for Key Populations Affected by HIV (LINKAGES) project cooperative agreement; and Research to Prevention (R2P) Project and Supporting Operational AIDS Research (SOAR).

The January 2012 issue of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases presented an Editorial, a Viewpoint, and two accompanying Expert Commentaries that focussed on the application of genetically modified (GM) insects for control of animal and plant diseases. These articles describe the technological advances these tools represent, the regulatory framework, and the societal dialogue that is necessary for their wide-scale application for disease control. Here, we have assembled a collection of articles published in the PLOS journals that describe the technical and applied aspects of GM insects. We also included articles that are not strictly GM, but aim to modify the disease transmission traits of insects through the use of symbiotic microbes.