Articles by Guest Author (152 results)

Guest post by C Brandon Ogbunu. 2022 marks the return of the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics (PEQG) Conference, organized by the Genetics Society of America. Part of the meeting’s popularity stems from being one of the few conferences that brings together leading thinkers in subfields of genetics that don’t typically overlap, across a range of…

Guest post by Charles H. Langley. Dic, hospes, doctis caelebs animalculum obisse hicque iacere physis legibus conveniens. (Stranger, tell the learned that the celibate little animal has passed away, and lies here, conforming to the laws of nature.) —John Rundin, with apologies to Simonides and Cicero Thirty-five years ago, in a celebrated News & Views…

Guest post by Gavin Rice and Jessica M. Vélez  Over the past year and a half, the lack of in-person conferences and reduced number of external seminar speakers have damaged the connection that early career scientists feel toward their scientific community. “Networking” is often cited as one of the most important tools for success in…

Guest post by Mehrnaz Afkani and Parinaz Khalilzadeh. In July 2021, as part of the Genetics Society of America’s Multilingual Seminar Series, scientists fluent in Farsi came together with a goal of connecting with each other and providing a platform for speaking about science in Farsi. This included discussing some of the issues and barriers…

Guest post by Marah Wahbeh and Arby Abood. Last year, after a casual conversation with Spanish-speaking early career scientists about the struggle of communicating their work in Spanish, Jessica Vélez, PhD, was inspired to create the Multilingual Seminar Series. This series offers an opportunity for multilingual and non-English speaking scientists and science enthusiasts to talk…

SASTA President Rana Dajani discusses the need for diversity and introduces SASTA’s mission to advance science and technology in the Arab world. The Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World (SASTA) is a non-profit organization in the US that strives to mobilize and catalyze the engagement of scientists, professionals, NGO’s, academic…

It’s no secret that the unique situation we are experiencing as the result of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak is deeply affecting the lives of millions around the world, both directly and indirectly. Scientists have had to adapt, where possible, to work remotely, only performing what is deemed “critical” by a given administration. This begs the…

Dick on sabbatical and my good fortune Guest post in memory of Richard Lewontin by Thoru Pederson. When I was a graduate student in the Zoology Department at Syracuse University, a visiting professor took an office across the hall from the lab where I was stationed. He came “across” to me (not a cis-trans test…

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…

Jean Robert David, the last active member of the French generation who significantly contributed to the establishment of the nine species in the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup as a model for evolutionary genetics, passed away on June 19, 2021, aged 90. Jean dedicated his 70-year academic career to studying Drosophila biology and evolution, starting as an…

Guest post by A.J. Marian Walhout, PhD. Massachusetts, March 2020: The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that would profoundly affect us all. Labs shut down abruptly, assay trials were disrupted, some experiments in progress were thrown out. Now what? With pipettes unused on the bench and the foreseeable future unclear, how long would this…