Articles by Guest Author (174 results)

Mark Blaxter (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh) reports on the “Caenorhabditis Genomes Project” workshop at GSA’s recent 20th International C. elegans Meeting. Caenorhabditis elegans, affectionately referred to as “the worm,” is one of the prettiest and most informative of the model organisms. It is see-through, has a simple lifecycle and a remarkably simple anatomy,…

Technical tips and progress on worm CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering   Today’s guest post was contributed by Mike Boxem, Daniel Dickinson, and Alexandre Paix. Mike Boxem is a group leader at Utrecht University. His interests include technology development, systems biology, and cell polarity. Daniel Dickinson is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of North Carolina.  His interests include…

Today’s guest post is contributed by Todd Plummer, a Research Associate in Gordon Lithgow’s lab at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Todd is a certified California Naturalist interested in the ecological relationships that affect wild strains of worms used as model organisms. Follow him on Twitter: @plumtodd  This post first appeared on SAGE, a blog focused on the science…

Today’s guest post is contributed by Robin Bisson, Director of the Genetic Expert News Service (GENeS). For scientists, talking to the media can be exciting, intimidating, powerful, or frustrating, and often a combination of all the above. It’s gratifying to read about your research in newspapers and well-read websites, or to see your name in…

Today’s guest post is authored by Diana Chu and Ahna Skop and features artwork from the Worm Art Show, recently held at the GSA-sponsored 20th International C. elegans Meeting in Los Angeles. Diana Chu is an Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University and Ahna Skop is an Associate Professor of Genetics at the…

Today’s guest post is by Tiffany Timbers, a neurogenomicist at Simon Fraser University. Follow her on Twitter: @TiffanyTimbers. This post about the Genetics Society of America 20th International C. elegans Meeting first appeared on Tiffany’s blog and is republished here with her permission. I just recently returned home from the 20th International C. elegans Meeting at UCLA.…

Today’s guest post was contributed by Andreas Prokop, of the University of Manchester. Along with research on the cell biology of neurons during development and ageing, he is engaged in many science communication and outreach projects. Follow him on Twitter: @Poppi62 More than a century of intense research with the fruit fly Drosophila has arguably turned…

Male Drosophila fruit flies perform an elaborate ritual when they court a female. The male first turns towards the female, follows her, taps her, vibrates his wings to produce a species-specific song, licks her genitalia, curves his abdomen toward her and, if all goes well, the pair finally copulate. These complex routines may help flies…

With genomic data from hundreds of thousands of people accumulating, geneticists are now able to mine these data for very rare, but very informative genetic variants, including loss-of-function alleles. For example, across the enormous “reference set” of human exomes announced at the 2014 American Society for Human Genetics Meeting, on average there’s a variant every six bases. In the first of our reports from the ASHG…