Featured

As a Principal at venture capital firm Canaan, Colleen Cuffaro works to identify biopharmaceutical companies that have the next big idea in drug development. In the Decoding Life series, we talk to geneticists with diverse career paths, tracing the many directions possible after research training. This series is brought to you by the GSA Early Career Scientist Career…

Although epigenetic modifications contribute to trait variability, their effect pales in comparison to standing genetic variation. The raw material of evolution is genetic variation, but proponents of the “extended evolutionary synthesis” add a new layer to this model: heritable variation in epigenetics. The packaging and tagging of DNA can alter traits without changing the DNA…

Attendees of the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference are a creative bunch.  Inspired by one of the PEQG Bingo challenges, they bombarded Twitter with more than 50 #PEQG18 haikus (and one limerick), providing poetic snippets of the meeting to those who couldn’t make it. Joining the 17-syllable summaries were fantastic sketch notes of the meeting by…

We are pleased to announce that Didem P. Sarikaya (University of California, Davis) has been appointed a Trainee Advisory Representative to the GSA Board of Directors for 2018–2020. Sarikaya has been a GSA member since 2010, and since 2017 has served as the Co-Chair of GSA’s Early Career Scientist Career Development Subcommittee, helping spearhead the…

Crop properties improved by point mutation in microRNA binding domain of Q gene. Humans have been cultivating wheat for ten thousand years, transforming it from an unruly grass into a useful crop highly adapted to our needs. But even after millennia, there are still new avenues for improving this staple food. A new type of…

This post is part of the Early Career Scientist Policy Subcommittee’s series on science policy fellowships. You can also search for fellowship opportunities in the GSA Policy Fellowship Database. AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships (STPF) give scientists and engineers the opportunity to apply their knowledge and analytical skills to the policymaking process. These US-based fellowships…

GSA President Jeannie Lee invites your input. Like everything right now, science is changing fast. It seems like every time I look up from my work, the view has shifted, and the landscape is a little less familiar. This speed can be both exciting and disorienting, but either way, it pays to scan the horizon…

Model organism researchers face shared challenges in communicating the value of their work. How do you get policymakers to fund research on a microscopic organism they’ve never heard of? How do you explain to the public why scientists spend time understanding yeast and frogs and flies? In 2015, the ciliate research community decided to invest…

Identifying signatures of polygenic adaptation is getting easier—but a commentary calls for caution in drawing conclusions. If you’ve ever wished for a stepstool so you could see the stage at a crowded concert, or, conversely, if you’re tired of being asked “How’s the weather up there?”, you’ve likely pondered what makes some of us tall…

Population data from Quebec reveals the genetic consequences of rapid human expansions. The majority of the 6.5 million French Canadians living in Quebec today can trace their heritage to just 8500 settlers who formed clusters around the Saint Lawrence River in the early 17th century. Most remained near those riverside settlements until 200 years later,…

An update on the pilot GENETICS Peer Review Training Program, which provides early career scientists with a mentored peer review experience in which they participate in authentic manuscript reviews. The second phase of the pilot program is currently accepting applicants. As a scientific society publisher, the GSA serves our community. That’s why we are so…