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Unmasking an elusive Daphnia disease
After 60 years of mystery, researchers have identified the pathogen responsible for White Fat Cell Disease. Water fleas of the genus Daphnia have long been critical tools for studying the ecology and evolution of host-pathogen interactions, but one of their natural pathogens has remained mysterious for more than six decades. In the 1950s, Daphnia magna…
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Why Ciliates? Making a video introduction to a model organism
Model organism researchers face shared challenges in communicating the value of their work. How do you get policymakers to fund research on a microscopic organism they’ve never heard of? How do you explain to the public why scientists spend time understanding yeast and frogs and flies? In 2015, the ciliate research community decided to invest…
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Early Career Leadership Spotlight — Abigail LaBella
We’re taking time over the following weeks to get to know the members of the GSA’s Early Career Scientist Committees. Join us every week to learn more about our early career scientist advocates. Abigail LaBella Diversity Subcommittee Vanderbilt University Research Interest The genetic code has long been thought of as the language…
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2018 Crow Award finalists presenting at #PEQG18
We are delighted to announce the finalists for the James F. Crow Early Career Researcher Award! All finalists will speak at the Crow Award session of the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference on May 14, 2018 in Madison, Wisconsin. The Award honors the legacy of James F. Crow, whose contributions to the field of…
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A remembrance: Dr. Kathleen A. Matthews & the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center and FlyBase
Guest post by Thomas Kaufman in memory of Kathy Matthews. The original Drosophila Stock Center was housed at Cal Tech in Pasadena and was established by Calvin Bridges and Alfred Sturtevant—students of Thomas Hunt Morgan. On Morgan’s and Bridges’ deaths, the responsibility for the collection fell to Sturtevant, who subsequently passed it to his student…
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Enter the #PEQG18 T-shirt design contest!
Get creative for the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference. Show your creative side, and inspire the population, evolutionary, and quantitative genetics community by entering the #PEQG18 T-shirt design contest! The winning entry will be used on official conference T-shirts available for sale at the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference, to be held…
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A new role for a signpost on the chromatin landscape
Monomethylated H3K27 is more than just an intermediate. We often talk about biological traits as if they’re written in our DNA, but some of them aren’t in our DNA at all—instead, they’re on it in the form of chemical tags on the histone proteins our genomic DNA is wrapped around. During development, each cell’s genome…
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Heights and pitfalls in detecting polygenic adaptation
Identifying signatures of polygenic adaptation is getting easier—but a commentary calls for caution in drawing conclusions. If you’ve ever wished for a stepstool so you could see the stage at a crowded concert, or, conversely, if you’re tired of being asked “How’s the weather up there?”, you’ve likely pondered what makes some of us tall…
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Mathematical matryoshka: unscrambling Russian doll genes in ciliates
Elaborate genome rearrangements take nesting to the extreme. Oxytricha trifallax is a single-celled virtuoso of genome rearrangement. Oxytricha is a ciliate, and like all ciliates, it has two nuclei: a tiny, germline micronucleus and a large, somatic macronucleus. Mating brings together two micronuclei, and the daughter cell creates a new macronucleus out of the zygotic…
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Early Career Leadership Spotlight — Joseph Tolsma
We’re taking time over the following weeks to get to know the members of the GSA’s Early Career Scientist Committees. Join us every week to learn more about our early career scientist advocates. Joseph Tolsma Communication & Outreach Subcommittee North Carolina State University Research Interest DES is a synthetic form of estrogen…
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On the origin of germ cells
Recent evolution of simple germ–soma division in a green alga sheds light on the early stages of complex multicellular life. Among evolution’s greatest innovations are germ cells. These specialized reproductive cells—familiar to us as sperm and eggs in humans—set the stage for complex multicellular life because they free up all the other cells in the…