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The recent Brexit vote may initiate a break up of the European Union and a split in the United Kingdom. Violence and war is tearing apart the Middle East. Racial tensions are flaring up in the U.S. But in Florida two weeks ago, 3,000 model organism geneticists proved that separate communities not only can co-exist…

Guest post by Tyler Kent. #TAGC16 Shorts are brief summaries of presentations at The Allied Genetics Conference, a combined meeting of seven genetics research communities held July 13-17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. Purging harmful mutations is the most common task of natural selection. In non-recombining populations this background selection process represents the “survival of the…

The Allied Genetics Conference brought seven genetics research communities together in Orlando to share great science and make new scientific connections. Watch the video below to see a few highlights from the meeting.

Lurking in colonies of pathogenic bacteria are drug-resistant mutants. If the colony is exposed to antibiotics, these resistant mutants may survive, but they still face the challenge of recolonizing the host. Their success in this task depends on their diversity; a diverse population is more likely to harbor mutants that can withstand a second threat,…

Last week at The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins provided an overview of model organism support from his agency. Collins used a new analysis performed by NIH staff to address concerns expressed by many of the model organism researchers gathered at TAGC, particularly a 2015 analysis by Michael…

For the past several decades, Shetland ponies’ collective past had caught up with them. A portion of the population of these miniature horses is affected by atavism, a phenomenon in which ancient characteristics are accidentally revived by mutations. Traits reincarnated in this way sometimes interact disastrously with the genetic background of the modern organism. For…

One of Shakespeare’s First Folios was recently on loan from the Folger Library to Seattle, and my wife and I went to view it. You don’t have to be a theatre-lover to feel awestruck peering at the page opened at: “To be or not to be…” in a printing from Shakespeare’s troupe made shortly after…

Although some proteins have a single career, many—like Dis3—lead a double life. In the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, loss-of-function mutations in dis3 cause defects in mitosis, implying that Dis3 normally supports cell cycle progression. But perplexingly, results in humans suggest that Dis3 normally slows cell cycle progression: mutations that partially disable dis3 contribute to the development…

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. Michael Wangler Assistant Professor (starting July 2016) Department of Molecular and Human Genetics Baylor College of Medicine Lab website Research program: The overall long-term goal…

My apologies for this blog post to Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, who collaborated with Sir Arthur Sullivan on a series of comic operas that included The Pirates of Penzance. Pirates premiered in 1879 and featured a song called “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” and I am far from the first to…

Model Organism Databases (MODs) and the Gene Ontology Consortium play a crucial “behind-the-scenes” role in the work of model organism geneticists and many other biomedical researchers. This guest post by the newly-formed Alliance of Genome Resources announces the group’s intention to integrate the efforts of the MODs and other genome resources. You can learn more…