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Towering sugar pine trees dominate the mountain forests of California and Oregon. They are the tallest pine trees in the world, regularly growing to skyscraper heights of over 100 meters. But these forest behemoths are under attack from a very tiny foe: an invasive fungus. White pine blister rust was accidentally introduced to western North…

Let’s bid farewell to 2016 with a look back at some of your favorite Genes to Genomes post from the year—plus a few more we think you’ll like: Five most popular posts of 2016 Dear Mr. Trump GSA President Stan Fields advises US President-elect Donald Trump to surprise the world and make science the cornerstone of his administration. How…

Sonia Hall is working with the GSA in a newly-created role as Program Director for Early Career Scientist Engagement. Executive Director Tracey DePellegrin spoke with Sonia about why focusing on helping this group of scientists is so important, including plans to start a GSA steering committee led by graduate students & postdocs. Sonia received her…

To paraphrase the Car Talk guys, “Well, it’s happened again—you’ve wasted another perfectly good year reading frameshifts.” Although not as much as I have in writing it. And perhaps this hasn’t been “perfectly good” as years go. But as far as the GSA goes, we’ve dealt with some major events this year.     First,…

The Allied Genetics Conference was an experiment for the GSA. We brought together under one roof seven separate research community meetings: C. elegans, ciliate, Drosophila, mouse, yeast, zebrafish, and population, evolutionary, and quantitative genetics. Today we are launching another experiment, this time, to communicate results presented at the meeting. Thanks to a generous grant from the…

Sex chromosomes have evolved from autosomes hundreds of times across the tree of life. In mammals, sex is controlled by the Y chromosome-linked gene SRY, which triggers the development of male anatomy. Sex determination in most mammals is extremely conserved; essentially all marsupials and placental mammals share the same pair of X and Y chromosomes…

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…

To the unaided eye, Antarctic soil and alpine glaciers may appear to be barren wastelands devoid of life. But some microbes call hostile habitats like these home. Research on one such organism, published in the latest issue of G3, reveals some of the mechanisms behind cold adaptation—and explains why these otherwise hardy creatures can’t survive…

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…