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I’m fond of saying that while scientists often have a hankering to draw sketches, pen novels, compose songs, or carry out other acts of artistic creation in what available free time they have, you don’t find many creative artists hankering to borrow a bit of lab space for a few nighttime experiments. If you’re a…

Efforts to engineer genomes in wild populations have huge potential for good—but the real world is more complicated than the lab. Until now, humans have never been able to seriously consider how to cheat evolution. But now that the CRISPR/Cas9 system has made genome editing easy and efficient, it might be possible to manipulate the…

In Kentucky 150 years ago today, a child was born who would—with the help of a hardy inhabitant of trash cans and fruit bowls— grow up to change the world. That boy was Thomas Hunt Morgan. By the 1900s, the energetic young Morgan had become a well-respected expert investigating questions in experimental embryology and animal regeneration.…

Perhaps no topic has had more ink spilled by biobloggers – especially if you include electrons dripping out of laptops – than the tyranny of the Journal Impact Factor. A metric designed by Eugene Garfield to help librarians select journals, the IF has been routinely abused for purposes never intended. How can we reverse this…

The beautiful cover of the August issue of GENETICS was created by artist Michele Banks to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of a pivotal moment in the history of evolutionary biology: the 1966 publication of a pair of GENETICS papers using protein electrophoresis to reveal that natural genetic diversity is bountiful. Thanks to a conversation between…

Geography and ecology are key factors that have influenced the genetic makeup of human groups in southern Africa, according to new research discussed in the journal GENETICS, a publication of the Genetics Society of America. By investigating the ancestries of twenty-two KhoeSan groups, including new samples from the Nama and the ≠Khomani, researchers conclude that…

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Tracey DePellegrin as the new Executive Director of the GSA. Tracey has been the Executive Editor of our two journals, GENETICS and G3. Those of you who have not been president of the GSA—a population that included me until this year—may well be asking, “What does an…

The Allied Genetics Conference was a combined meeting of seven genetics research communities held July 13-17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. Many talks given throughout the meeting featured compelling images and videos that generated a lot of buzz in various communities. Here, Genes to Genomes is excited to highlight just a few of the wonderful scientific images shared at #TAGC16.…

I’m just back from a week-long vacation in magnificent southeast Alaska, nestled up against British Columbia. Off remote Chichagof Island, humpback whales surrounded us, so close we rafted our kayaks and thumped on them. In the Inian Islands, we spotted bald eagles perched amidst the tall Sitka spruces, their heads visible like golf balls in…

#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. One of the earliest events in development is the switch to self sufficiency. Soon after an egg is fertilized, the new individual must activate its genome and cease…

The detonation of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 resulted in horrific casualties and devastation. The long-term effects of radiation exposure also increased cancer rates in the survivors. But public perception of the rates of cancer and birth defects among survivors and their children is in fact greatly…