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Guest author Rori Rohlfs describes a unique classroom project for exploring the eugenic history of our field. I was a fourth-year graduate student when I found myself asking a librarian for the archives of the journal The Annals of Eugenics. I got to that point by climbing back through a chain of references on fundamental…

As yet another Black man suffocates under a policeman’s knee, cities burn, and the coronavirus spreads a disproportionate burden of suffering and death to communities of color, we are in a moment that calls for action. It would be heartfelt and true for White scientists like me to say to our colleagues and fellow citizens…

The GSA Journals, GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, are proud to present our annual Spotlight booklets for research published in 2019. Each Spotlight is a showcase of the excellent research and scholarship published over the course of the year, along with a selection of striking images submitted by our authors. Browse the 2019 GENETICS Spotlight. Browse the 2019 G3 Spotlight.

Today it’s easy to take for granted that geneticists can identify a mutation, find its gene, and map it to the expressed protein. But just a few decades ago, this problem remained a thorny one. Welcome Bender of Harvard Medical School—with his work teasing out the function of the bithorax complex in Drosophila—made key advances…

Julie Ahringer has focused her career on understanding development and transcriptional regulation in Caenorhabditis elegans. Along the way her lab has built invaluable tools, including a genome-wide RNAi library, that have supported a huge range of discoveries across biology. In recognition of this work, Ahringer has been awarded the 2020 George W. Beadle Award from…

Fifteen years ago, Seth Bordenstein and a small group of colleagues started planning a series of lab experiences that would bring cutting edge genetics methods into biology classrooms. Because they worked on Wolbachia microbes that live in half of the world’s arthropod species, they centered the work on these bacterial parasites and started locally with…

GSA’s Executive Director explains why and how we’re taking TAGC 2020 virtual.   For several years, we at GSA have been planning The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), originally set for DC in late April 2020. After a successful inaugural meeting in 2016, organizers and GSA staff sought to bring communities together by focusing on scientific…

Last week, the GSA Board of Directors cancelled The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), an event we had all been eagerly anticipating. It was a heartbreaking end to four years of work and planning by many people across our community.  Although painful, the decision was clearly the socially responsible thing to do. The Board voted unanimously…

When Bonnie Bassler was wrapping up her biochemistry PhD at Johns Hopkins University, she heard a research talk at a small conference in Baltimore that switched on a light and changed her career. A geneticist described how groups of bioluminescent marine Vibrio bacteria could start glowing simultaneously. “I’m sitting there thinking ‘Holy Smokes, how is…

For more than 50 years, Gerald Fink of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David Botstein of Calico Life Sciences have made unique, and sometimes intersecting, contributions to genetics. Together they taught an advanced genetics course at MIT for more than a decade; they’ve co-authored a series of perspective papers and patents. Each has mentored dozens…

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…