Community Voices

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. Bianca Ruiz is a graduate student rotating in the Fields lab at the University of Washington, Genome Sciences, who…

According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, 33% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years and another 24% believe that God guided evolution over millions of years to create humans as they exist today. While scientists should respect people’s deeply held religious beliefs, it…

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. To me, science is not about being in the lab; it is about solving puzzles. I have been working…

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. Our first GSA-Art post is by Matthew S. Sachs, a Professor in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University…

Guest post by Teresa Bonello It was 1984 and the first cloning of the homeobox sequence in Drosophila had just been reported. Newly-minted postdoc Denis Duboule was called into the office of his mentor, Pierre Chambon, and asked if he wanted to lead his own investigation looking for Hox clusters in mice. What followed was…

I’m fond of saying that while scientists often have a hankering to draw sketches, pen novels, compose songs, or carry out other acts of artistic creation in what available free time they have, you don’t find many creative artists hankering to borrow a bit of lab space for a few nighttime experiments. If you’re a…

Perhaps no topic has had more ink spilled by biobloggers – especially if you include electrons dripping out of laptops – than the tyranny of the Journal Impact Factor. A metric designed by Eugene Garfield to help librarians select journals, the IF has been routinely abused for purposes never intended. How can we reverse this…

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Tracey DePellegrin as the new Executive Director of the GSA. Tracey has been the Executive Editor of our two journals, GENETICS and G3. Those of you who have not been president of the GSA—a population that included me until this year—may well be asking, “What does an…

The Allied Genetics Conference was a combined meeting of seven genetics research communities held July 13-17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. Many talks given throughout the meeting featured compelling images and videos that generated a lot of buzz in various communities. Here, Genes to Genomes is excited to highlight just a few of the wonderful scientific images shared at #TAGC16.…

New Faculty Profiles showcase GSA members who are establishing their first independent labs. If you’d like to be considered for a profile, please complete this form on the GSA website. Carolyn Phillips Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences (Since 2015) University of Southern California Lab website Research program: The Phillips lab studies the mechanisms of…

I’m just back from a week-long vacation in magnificent southeast Alaska, nestled up against British Columbia. Off remote Chichagof Island, humpback whales surrounded us, so close we rafted our kayaks and thumped on them. In the Inian Islands, we spotted bald eagles perched amidst the tall Sitka spruces, their heads visible like golf balls in…