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Thanks to more than a hundred years of working with Drosophila melanogaster, geneticists have many powerful tools for precisely manipulating its genes. It has also become a model system for studying speciation and molecular evolution together with the other members of the melanogaster species group: D. simulans, D. mauritiana, D. yakuba, and D. santomea. However,…

In 1997, Ahna Skop approached her graduate advisor, John G. White, about adding a worm-themed art show to the International C. elegans Conference he was organizing that year. “He said I could do whatever I wanted, but not to involve him,” she recalls. That year marked the very first Worm Art Show, which has since…

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of scientists and science enthusiasts came out in force, rallying at more than 600 locations around the world to support robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. Many in the GSA community joined the March for Science, including a group at the Washington DC event, led by GSA President…

Take two neighboring cells from the same tissue—cells that are about as identical as any could be. Despite their similarities, these two cells could actually vary massively in their transcriptome. The typical fate of an mRNA—the “transcript” in transcriptome—is to serve as a template to make a protein, but it isn’t clear that the differences…

Restricting calorie intake seems to promote longer lives in a wide range of organisms, from microbes to mammals. Some determined youth-seekers are already adopting reduced-calorie diets in an attempt to extend their lifespans. But it’s not clear yet that these anti-aging effects apply to humans, and the mechanisms by which they work in other organisms…

GSA is an official partner of the March for Science—we hope you will join us in marching on Earth Day, April 22! You can now wear one of our fantastic new GSA March for Science T-shirts, available in two designs. All proceeds go to the non-profit, volunteer-run March for Science organization, supporting the major logistics costs…

In the genomic era, population geneticists are flooded with molecular data on the evolution of natural populations. This deluge started in 1966 as a trickle of data from protein electrophoresis studies, including the landmark GENETICS papers published by Richard Lewontin and John Hubby. As Lewontin is honored this week at the Annual Drosophila Research Conference…

We have heard an outpouring of anger and fear from our members since the President’s budget proposal was released on March 16th. As GSA President Lynn Cooley and Vice-President Jeannie Lee argued last week, the proposed gutting of federal research budgets would be terrible for science—and worse for society. But this is just a proposal.…

One of the last places you’d expect to find a charged amino acid residue is buried within the hydrophobic interior of a lipid bilayer. And for the most part, this expectation holds true: portions of proteins that span membranes are typically composed of hydrophobic residues. But in some cases, the positively charged residues lysine and…

When geneticist Rob Unckless took his son to Lego Club at the local library, he was not expecting to start a new collaboration. The result is the striking piece of science-inspired art that graces the cover of the February issue of GENETICS. Created by artist Kent Smith, “Attack of the 50 Foot Mosquito” was inspired…

Despite being covered by a massive, permanent ice sheet, Greenland has been continuously inhabited by humans for over a thousand years. Most modern Greenlanders are Inuit whose ancestors migrated eastward from Canada around 1000 AD, bringing technology like kayaks and dogsleds. They eventually settled on the coasts of the world’s largest island, hunting whales and…