Community Voices

Dear GSA Members, 2015 has been a very important and productive year for the GSA, with much progress on issues critical to our community. Here are a few of the highlights: Following the incredible success of YeastBook in GENETICS, the GSA has just launched FlyBook, with Lynn Cooley as Editor-in-Chief—and will soon launch WormBook with…

A Canadian network focused on rare diseases is playing matchmaker between clinicians and model organism researchers. Over half of children with rare, inherited monogenic diseases lack a molecular diagnosis. There are an estimated 7,000 monogenic diseases possible, and only about half of those have been implicated in human disease. The Rare Diseases: Models & Mechanisms…

Publishing research in one of the GSA Journals as an undergraduate is a significant and valuable authorship experience and we want to hear your story (even if it was published years ago!). GSA’s Spotlight on Undergraduate Research showcases GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics authors who were undergraduates when contributing to their paper. Faiz Kabbinavar Undergraduate Institution: University of Pittsburgh…

GSA needs your input! We are brainstorming about catchy slogans, images, or objects that represent the whole of the genetics community. The kind of thing that you’d like to wear on a t-shirt and that would appeal across the GSA community. What does your GSA look like? What do you love most about the genetics community?…

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.   Peter Stirling Scientist, Terry Fox Laboratories Assistant Professor University of British Columbia Lab website   Research program: My lab is using functional genomics, molecular biology,…

In October of this year, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine held a public workshop to gather information regarding the safety and ethics of gene drive research.  GSA Public Policy Chair Allan Spradling sent the following comments to the committee for consideration.    In the late 1980s I was one of the first…

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.   Clement Chow Assistant Professor Department of Human Genetics University of Utah School of Medicine Lab website Personal Twitter:  @ClementYChow Lab Twitter:  @ChowLab   Research program:…

Kevin Ahern and Indira Rajagopal, both from the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University, described the process of creating an interactive e-textbook in biochemistry while presenting at the Gordon Research Conference on Undergraduate Biology Education Research in the summer of 2015. G2G asked them about their experience writing and publishing and they…

Today’s guest author is Emma Farley, a postdoctoral researcher in Mike Levine’s lab, which recently relocated to Princeton (formerly at University of California, Berkeley). Sea squirts (Ciona intestanalis) are a classic system for the study of development. They were a favorite of early developmental biologists like Laurent Chabry, Ed Conklin, and Thomas Hunt Morgan. Over…

This month, the GSA journal GENETICS published an editorial that illuminates the struggles experienced by scientists when trying to both do good science and advance in their career, especially as it relates to the unintended effects of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). The editorial by Executive Editor Tracey DePellegrin and Editor-in-Chief Mark Johnston is largely intended to…

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.   Zeba Wunderlich Assistant Professor Department of Developmental and Cell Biology University of California, Irvine Lab website   Research program: The Wunderlich Lab uses a combination…