Science & Publishing

From a Kyoto garden to scientific discoveries.  Since the 17th century, medaka fish have been bred for their beautiful colors. Shortly after the 1900 re-discovery of Mendel’s laws of inheritance, medaka began to be used for genetic studies. Recessive inheritance of the orange-red (b) and white (r) variants, female-limited appearance of the white phenotype, and an…

Multiple divergent retrocopies of the well-characterized Ku70 gene were identified in humans and other primates. The last 63 million years of primate evolution have been strongly shaped by genetic retrotransposition; thousands of genes and proteins with new functions have evolved from retrocopies scattered throughout the genome. These retrocopies arise when retrotransposons reverse transcribe a cellular…

New Bolotie method can handle the barrage of sequencing data that posed a problem for conventional recombination algorithms. Humanity has faced many pandemics throughout history, but never before have we tackled an active pandemic while so well equipped with genetic technology. In fact, when SARS-CoV-2 struck, the genetics community produced so much sequencing data so…

Every lab wants to produce high-quality, reproducible data. But when that data is destined for use by the whole community as part of an international consortium, there is an even greater incentive to ensure the highest standards. A new paper in G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics defines a critical step for the success of widely-used gene regulation experiments.   …

GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics are pleased to announce two new Senior Editors; Sharon Browning is a Senior Editor at GENETICS, and Gustavo de los Campos is a Senior Editor at G3. GENETICS Sharon Browning Sharon Browning is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. She received a BS in Mathematics from the University of…

Over 90 percent of the genome of this pathogen threatening Australian ecosystems is made of transposable elements. Myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii) is a pathogenic fungus that has spread rapidly across the globe with devastating effects on local vegetation, including agricultural crops. It is extremely versatile, with over 480 known host species in the widespread myrtle…

GENETICS and G3: Genes | Genomes | Genetics are pleased to announce four new editors: Leah Cowen, Michael Goddard, Joseph Heitman, and Hongyu Zhao. GENETICS Leah Cowen Leah Cowen is Vice President of Research at the University of Toronto (UofT), Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics, co-Director of the CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats &…

Failure of chromosomes to segregate properly results in severe medical conditions, or even death. Yet for a long time, it was challenging to study exactly how chromosomes carry out their complex choreography, due to a lack of robust tools for combining chromosome visualization and genetic experiments.  Douglas Koshland spent his postdoc studying mammalian chromosome biology…

GENETICS is pleased to announce four new editors for the Experimental Technologies and Resources section of the journal: Markus Affolter, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Kristin Tessmar-Raible, and Julie Hayner Simpson. Markus Affolter Markus Affolter is a developmental biologist at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and his lab has been interested in how cells form…

GENETICS is pleased to announce eight new editors for the Neurogenetics & Behavior section of the journal: Arantza Barrios, Tamara Caspary, Catherine Kaczorowski, Karla Kaun, Kyuhyung Kim, Roger Pocock, Hongyan Wang, and Jill Wildonger. Arantza Barrios Arantza Barrios is an Associate Professor/Reader in Neurobiology at University College London.  Her lab uses the C. elegans male to investigate…

One of life’s great mysteries is how a single egg cell can contain all the information needed to create a fully specialized complex organism, including more egg cells. Ruth Lehmann, director of the Whitehead Institute at MIT, has done a tremendous amount to solve that mystery. Beginning in her graduate student days, she uncovered a…