Community Voices

If you’re a young geneticist who spends most of your life hanging around universities—as I still do—you’ll likely notice in your department the presence of some old people. People in their 80’s and 90’s. Often, these are scientists who made incredible discoveries decades before you were born, but you may not know a thing about…

Guest post by Shruthi Vembar. GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists. Read more in GSA President Stan Fields’ call for submissions. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email to GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line. Madhubani painting, also known as Mithila painting, is an art form that originated in Northern…

Guest post by Bonny Brewer. GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists. Read more in GSA President Stan Fields’ call for submissions. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email to GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line. I have been in love with DNA for as long as I can remember.…

Dear President-elect Trump, It’s me again. I wrote you last week to say why you should make science a cornerstone of your administration. Don’t feel bad that with all the hubbub of starting up your new job, you haven’t had a chance to get back to me yet. But as I’ve read about some of…

Given the outcome of the US presidential election, some of our members have asked us if they should fear an erosion of federal support for research funding. Others have asked more pointed questions, such as: What is the GSA doing to defend the interests of geneticists? Young scientists, they’ve told us, are now even more…

Dear President-elect Trump, Congratulations on your victory. As a fellow president myself (albeit with a much smaller constituency), I can remember well those early post-election days, when the surge of heady enthusiasm for all those things I hoped to accomplish had not yet been eroded by the practicalities of actually governing. But as a geneticist…

GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists. Read more in GSA President Stan Fields’ call for submissions. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email to GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line. Guest post by Sean Burgess. Chromosome letters is a short novel that follows two young DNA strands, Tabellarius and…

Guest post by Christine Queitsch. Last week when the scientific community lost one of its brightest and most innovative minds, I lost my long-time mentor and the closest thing to a mother since I lost mine. Susan Lindquist had found me in a basement laboratory in the former East Germany, in 1992, shortly after the…

GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists. Read more in GSA President Stan Fields’ call for submissions. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email to GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line. Biswapriya Misra is a postdoc in the Department of Genetics at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute. He loves cooking and…

I’m a total sucker for new methods. I couldn’t wait to try out Trans-Helical Illumination (THI), in which low intensity lasers prime conversion of helical proteins. The potential of Synthetically Integrative Sensor Neurons (SISN) to probe brain subregion function is inspiring. Closer to my own heart, we have high hopes that Optical Wavelength Assembly of…

Guest post by Joanne Topol. GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists. Read more in GSA President Stan Fields’ call for submissions. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email to GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line. My art reflects inner feelings that cannot be accessed through analytic thought. These feelings are…