Since the 17th century, the tiny medaka fish that dart through rice paddies in Japan have been bred as living ornaments. Though in the wild they are a nondescript mud color, medaka occasionally turn up in flashier mutant varieties — orange-red, pearlescent white, black splotched — that were much prized by generations of fish fanciers.…

In 2009, after five years parching under the arid blue skies of Calcena in northeastern Spain, dozens of neat rows of maritime pine seedlings had grown unevenly. Some of the seedlings had died years ago, some were stunted but hanging on, while others grew tall and green. The trees were not in their native soil.…

From animal domestication to human genome variation, from loblolly genomes to lager genomes, from wild zebrafish sex to untangled metagenomes, last year brought plenty of high points for the GSA journals. So gathering a small selection of those high points into the 2014 Spotlight booklets was a challenging, but rewarding task for the editors of GENETICS…

Fruit flies suffer from an image problem. Maybe it’s the alliteration in the name, or the association with bananas, but Drosophila have become a go-to target for politicians looking to ridicule wasteful public spending. In February, presidential candidate and US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned the NIH for spending: “…a million dollars trying to determine…

The April issue of GENETICS is out now! Check out the highlights below of the full Table of Contents here. Nascent transcription affected by RNA polymerase IV in Zea mays, pp. 1107–1125 Karl F. Erhard Jr., Joy-El R. B. Talbot, Natalie C. Deans, Allison E. McClish, and Jay B. Hollick RNA polymerase IV (Pol IV) is required…

Check out the April issue of G3! Investigations A Bayesian Model for the Analysis of Transgenerational Epigenetic Variation Luis Varona, Sebastián Munilla, Elena Flavia Mouresan, Aldemar González-Rodríguez, Carlos Moreno, and Juan Altarriba G3 April 2015 5:477-485; Early Online January 23, 2015, doi:10.1534/g3.115.016725 Abstract | Full Text | Full Text (PDF) | Supporting Information Identification of…