Articles by Guest Author (172 results)

Guest post by Charleen Adams. The Trump administration has proposed legislation that would make it legal to forcibly collect DNA from hundreds of thousands of migrants held in detention centers at the US-Mexico border [1,2]. This type of mass genetic surveillance is unprecedented. The closest comparison we have for it is the routine screening of…

We are pleased to announce the election of five new leaders to the GSA Board of Directors: 2020 Vice-President/2021 President Hugo Bellen Professor, Molecular and Human Genetics, Neuroscience, and Developmental Biology, and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Baylor College of Medicine Hugo Bellen is a Drosophila geneticist who has…

Guest post by Irini Topalidou, Senior Scientist at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle. I first met Martin “Marty” Chalfie in January 2004, when I visited his laboratory in the biology department of Columbia University to interview for a postdoctoral position. At this point, Marty was already a professor of biological sciences, studying…

Increasing support for parents in science means making conferences more child-friendly. Guest post by Elisabeth Marnik and Julie Claycomb, members of the GSA Conference Childcare Committee. The scientific community works on the cutting edge. We implement new techniques and methods as soon as we can with the understanding that—though there may be challenges along the…

Guest post by Cassidy Villeneuve, Wiki Education. A Wikipedia writing assignment is a great opportunity for instructors to teach science communication skills on a world stage. In this kind of assignment, genetics students create or improve Wikipedia articles related to course topics. They’re especially well equipped to translate scientific concepts this way for a general audience,…

Guest post by Susan Gerbi, George Eggleston Professor of Biochemistry and professor of biology at Brown University, and Virginia A. Zakian, Harry C. Wiess Professor in the Life Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University. Patricia J. Pukkila September 28, 1948 – June 20, 2019 Dr. Patricia J. Pukkila passed away on June…

Guest post by Tânia Reis, Chair of GSA’s Conference Childcare Committee, on barriers to conference participation and how we can address them. I’m a Scientist. I’m a Mom. I couldn’t pick one over the other; half of me would be missing. I am lucky I have never had to choose. Yet, there were and are…

Guest authors C. Brandon Ogbunugafor and Rafael F. Guerrero demystify higher order epistasis through a short story about the perfect brew. Epistasis is the flavor of the month Epistasis is one of the most popular and provocative topics in modern genetics. It has many different definitions, but one especially useful one is that epistasis is…

A member of GSA’s Conference Childcare Committee presents an overview of childcare resources available at scientific conferences. Guest post by Madhumala K. Sadanandappa. Recently, I received an email from the Genetics Society of America (GSA) regarding my interest in being a part of the Conference Childcare Committee that aims to tackle the childcare-conference conundrum as outlined…

Guest post by Kathryn “Kaylee” Mueller, Phase Genomics. Plasmodium parasites—the microbes that cause malaria—are right at home in the tropics. After all, tropical regions harbor the two animals that the malaria parasites need to complete their complex lifecycle: female Anopheles mosquitoes and human beings. And in 2017 alone, Plasmodiumracked up 219 million cases of malaria,…

Guest post by Giovanna Collu. Are you planning a visit to Capitol Hill to advocate for science? We asked Giovanna Collu, former Co-Chair of the Early Career Scientist Policy Subcommittee, to discuss the lessons she learned representing GSA at a Hill Day organized by the Federation of American Societies For Experimental Biology (FASEB).  As well…