News

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…

The Victoria Finnerty Travel Award supports travel costs for undergraduate GSA members who are engaged in research to attend the Annual Drosophila Research Conference, which was to be part of TAGC in 2020. Due to TAGC moving to an online format, 2020 awardees will instead present their work virtually at TAGC Online. Victoria Finnerty, who…

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…

The Genetics Society of America is pleased to announce the 2020 recipients of its annual awards for distinguished service in the field of genetics. The awardees were nominated and selected by their colleagues and will be recognized with presentations at The Allied Genetics Conference, held April 22–26, 2020 in the metro Washington, DC area. The…

We are pleased to announce the election of five new leaders to the GSA Board of Directors: 2020 Vice-President/2021 President Hugo Bellen Professor, Molecular and Human Genetics, Neuroscience, and Developmental Biology, and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Baylor College of Medicine Hugo Bellen is a Drosophila geneticist who has…

Get to know the TAGC 2020 Keynote Speakers through our interview series. Edward S. Buckler is a Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS and an Adjunct Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University. He began his career studying molecular evolution and archaeology, which got him interested in using natural diversity to improve crops and…

Students, postdocs, academic faculty, and industry researchers will all find benefits at the new Industry Sessions at TAGC, to be held April 22–26 2020 in the Washington DC region. When industry scientists and academic labs collaborate, both society and science benefit. That’s one of two big-picture messages Kailene Simon hopes will be conveyed through a…