Science & Publishing

In the early 1940s, many biologists doubted bacteria had genes. After all, they seemed to play by their own genetic rules: they appeared to lack chromosomes, meiosis, mitosis, sex, and all the other trappings of Mendelian inheritance. They even seemed to show a kind of Lamarckian inheritance, in which an individual could pass on traits acquired…

The dizzying array of wing patterns in Heliconius butterflies has served as a model for evolution and adaptation in the wild for more than a century. The genus is most famous for the way different species within a geographic region tend to converge on similar wing markings—known as biological mimicry. In the latest issue of…

Check out the the March issue of GENETICS by looking at the highlights or the full table of contents! This Month’s Centennial Articles Richard Hudson and Norman Kaplan on the coalescent process, pp. 865–866 Nicholas H. Barton Senior Editor Nicholas H. Barton introduces Hudson and Kaplan’s 1988 Classic, which extended the coalescent process to include selection, applying it…

Sometimes, a nematode worm just needs to take a nap. In fact, its life may depend on it. New research has identified a protein that promotes a sleep-like state in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Without the snooze-inducing molecule, worms are more likely to die when confronted with stressful conditions, report researchers in the March 7, 2016…

Check out the March issue of G3! Investigations Partial Dominance, Overdominance, Epistasis and QTL by Environment Interactions Contribute to Heterosis in Two Upland Cotton Hybrids Lianguang Shang, Yumei Wang, Shihu Cai, Xiaocui Wang, Yuhua Li, Abdugheni Abduweli, and Jinping Hua G3 March 2016 6:499-507; Early Online December 29, 2015, doi:10.1534/g3.115.025809 Abstract | Full Text |…

You slave over writing your paper, trying to make sure that the introduction sets up a compelling story, that the results provide clear and convincing evidence for your conclusions, and that your discussion of what it all means makes sense. You and your co-authors edit relentlessly, passing the manuscript back and forth, improving it with…

Chromosomes can shatter. In a single, catastrophic rearrangement event, tens to hundreds of breakpoints are repaired imperfectly and result in a shuffling of genetic material. One such event affects insulin signaling and dauer formation in C. elegans, as reported in this month’s G3. Chromosome shattering, or chromothripsis, is a recently described phenomenon found in some…

A fisherman trying to catch rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) needs the right tools: proper flies, a strong rod, and a little bit of know-how. A scientist trying to understand the genetic population structure of rainbow trout in the Fall River watershed of northern California also relies on a trusty toolkit – albeit a very different…

Check out the the February issue of GENETICS by looking at the highlights or the full table of contents! ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS This Month’s Centennial Articles Salvador Luria and Max Delbruck on random mutation and fluctuation tests, pp. 367—368 Andrew Murray Associate Editor Andrew W. Murray introduces Luria and Delbruck’s 1943 GENETICS Classic Mutations of bacteria from…

When a C. elegans nematode starves early in its life cycle, its offspring are more resistant to starvation in the next generation; however, this life-saving inheritance comes at a fitness cost for the worm itself, reveals research published in GENETICS. Jobson et al. investigate the idea that lean experiences during early development cause organisms to…

In 1917, amidst the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, a bug-obsessed teenager in Kiev discovered a new species of ladybird beetle in the debris washed up on the banks of the flooding Dnieper River. The following year, he described the species in his first scientific publication. That 18-year old ladybug spotter —Theodosius Dobzhansky— would go…