At the time of her death in 1912, Nettie Maria Stevens was a biologist of enough repute to be eulogized in the journal Science by future Nobelist Thomas Hunt Morgan and for her passing to be noted in The New York Times. In 1910 she had been listed among 1,000 leading American “men of science.”…

In preparation for The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), set to take place in Orlando this July, Genes to Genomes is getting the inside scoop from many of the outstanding keynote speakers in our “Behind the Podium” series. Here, GSA member Sarah Neuman interviews National Institutes of Health Director, Francis Collins.     As the former…

You may have seen that recently several publishers signed an open letter committing to requiring ORCID iDs for at least the corresponding authors of accepted papers. Perhaps you’ve submitted a grant application to one of the funders now requiring ORCID iDs for grantees. Or maybe you’ve been asked—or required—to use your ORCID iD in one…

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute—in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation—has launched the International Research Scholars Program, which will support up to 50 outstanding early career scientists around the world. The competition is open to scientists who have run their own labs for less than…

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…

New Faculty Profiles showcase GSA members who are establishing their first independent labs. If you’d like to be considered for a profile, please complete this form on the GSA website.   Brent Neumann Senior Research Fellow Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology Monash University Melbourne, Australia Lab website Twitter:  @NeumannLab   Research program: We use…

In 2014, Bruce Alberts, Marc Kirschner, Shirley Tilghman, and Harold Varmus published an article in PNAS detailing the pitfalls and challenges of the structure of the biomedical workforce. Though many have written about and discussed these problems before, people seemed to pay attention to the conversation this time. Scientists at all stages of their careers…

NIH Director Francis Collins, along with the leaders of NIH’s institutes, centers, and offices, have written a letter emphasizing their continuing commitment to basic science. Despite past assurances to this effect (e.g., Collins 2012), the NIH leadership is concerned that the community may feel that NIH has moved away from basic research. The letter, which was published…

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…

GSA has begun to receive feedback from our members about the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). And we are interested to hear your perspective, especially if you were eligible to apply for MIRA.   Please let us know what you consider the strengths and weaknesses of…

NIH’s Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) has issued a program announcement for the Development of Animal Models and Related Biological Materials for Research. This opportunity “encourages highly innovative research to develop, characterize or improve animal models and related biological materials for human health and disease or to improve diagnosis and control of diseases that…