Collections

Bringing data to decision making for conservation and biodiversity

Translating conservation and biodiversity research from the field into the real world is a complex problem. This collection discusses issues around economics, policy, and how to do research that answers the questions that decision makers have.

Symbiosis across the tree of life

This PLOS Biology collection showcases the extraordinary diversity of symbiotic relationships across the tree of life, exploring their evolutionary basis and underlying mechanisms.

PLOS Biology 20th Anniversary

As PLOS Biology turns 20, we are celebrating two decades of publishing with a collection discussing the future of publishing and open science, the past and future of specific research fields, and some landmark PLOS Biology studies and how they have influenced subsequent research.

Engineering plants for a changing climate

This PLOS Biology collection explores engineering strategies to help us adapt plants to a changing climate, including breeding techniques, genome engineering, synthetic biology and microbiome engineering, with a focus on creating climate-resilient varieties and increasing the carbon-capture potential of croplands.

Going for green: Biology for planetary sustainability

This PLOS Biology collection focuses on technologies that take advantage of nature to improve sustainability. Articles explore biological solutions that could reduce CO₂ emissions, get rid of plastics that are currently not degradable, produce food more sustainably, and generate energy.

Ocean solutions for a sustainable, healthy and inclusive future

This PLOS Biology collection, explores potential solutions to mitigate the impacts of human activity on ocean ecosystems to minimize or reverse degradation, paving the way for the sustainable use of marine resources. Articles highlight some of the key research priorities on mitigation of the anthropogenic effects on the oceans.

Mendel’s legacy in modern genetics

This PLOS Biology collection, draws on the opinion of experts in the field of genetics, who look back at Mendel’s original research and examine how well it stands up to modern views on genetics, and how it has influenced the field.

Confronting Plastic Pollution to Protect Environmental and Public Health

In this PLOS Biology collection, our expert editors have compiled evidence-based commentaries that reveal the pressing need to develop robust methods to detect, evaluate, and mitigate the impacts of microplastics, most recently found in human placentas.

Epidemics on the move: climate change and infectious disease

This PLOS Biology collection, "Epidemics on the Move: Climate Change and Infectious Disease", features four papers that attempt to unravel some of this complexity through diverse disease systems, while highlighting key recommendations and approaches for further research.

PLOS Biology: Research Matters

Leading scientists explain why the research carried out in their laboratories - and those of their collaborators and their colleagues - matters.

Open Highlights

Open Highlights use recent PLOS Biology research articles as keystones around which to nucleate a short synthesis of related research articles from other the Open Access corpus.

PLOS Biology: Meta-Research

Featuring articles that aim to improve the standards, reproducibility, and evaluation of scientific research.

Slice of PLOS

Slice of PLOS highlights papers from across the PLOS journals, from mesocosms and climate change to the awesomeness of bats.

Public Engagement in Science

This series aims to investigate whether, and under what conditions, it is possible to engage the public in scientific issues in meaningful ways in decision-making about the innovation pathways of biosciences.

The Promise of Plant Translational Research

The technical advances highlighted in this collection exemplify how basic research discoveries are being translated into methods to develop and improve, both agriculturally and environmentally, important crop traits.

Tenth Anniversary PLOS Biology Collection

The Human Microbiome Project Collection

Funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund, the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was established to provide a comprehensive baseline of the microbial diversity at 18 different human body sites. The Human Microbiome Project Collection encompasses publications from the project.

Oceanic Metagenomics

The J. Craig Venter Institute's Global Ocean Sampling Expedition revealed an enormous amount of unexplored diversity in the world's oceans. This collection includes commentary and analysis highlighting the achievements and challenges of this work.

Challenges Collection

This collection of brief provocative discussion papers, initiated and edited by Simon Levin, aims to highlight fundamental questions in biology that cut across and help unify different biological disciplines.

Poverty

The Council of Science Editors organized a Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development on October 22, 2007. More than 200 science and health journals, including PLOS Medicine, PLOS Biology, and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, participated by publishing new articles.

Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease

This collection of essays, perspectives, and reviews from six PLOS Journals provides insights into how genomics can revolutionize our understanding of emerging infectious disease.

Structural Biology and Human Health: Medically Relevant Proteins from the SGC

This collection of articles represents some of the research highlights from the SGC, an international public-private partnership that determines three dimensional structures of medically important proteins from both human and human parasites and places this information into the public domain, free from restrictions on use. 

Open Access

In keeping with our primary mission of making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource, PLOS periodically publishes articles that explore the issues surrounding open access. Selected articles are featured to highlight key issues relating to open access.

Reporting Guidelines

Highlighting articles including guidance, commentary, and related research on reporting guidelines. This collection features some of the many resources available to facilitate the rigorous reporting of scientific studies, and to improve the presentation and evaluation of published studies.

Epigenetics 2010

This collection reflects a range of model systems and organisms, and offer phenotypic, mechanistic, and chromatin-based insights.