Science & Publishing

Even though domestic plants usually appear radically different from their wild relatives, they are often still able to interbreed. For transgenic crops carrying traits like herbicide resistance, this flexibility could pose a problem if they were to pollinate weedy relatives nearby. In the July issue of GENETICS, Adamczyk-Chauvat et al. examine the extent to which…

Epilepsy is characterized by recurrent seizures, often with no immediately obvious cause. In the August issue of G3, Ferland et al. use a genome-wide association study in mice to show that after multiple seizures, the genetic basis of seizure variation shifts from previously identified genomic regions to new ones. This research shows that the genetic…

Genes involved in male reproduction tend to evolve rapidly. This has been observed in many different species and is thought to be due to sexual selection as males compete over mating opportunities. But in the August issue of GENETICS, Whittle and Extavour present results that flip this paradigm upside down. They find that in the…

In the 1940s, C. H. Waddington discovered a peculiar phenomenon in fruit flies: traits could appear in response to environmental stress in an individual’s lifetime and then be passed down to future generations. Waddington proposed that this wasn’t the inheritance of acquired traits, but actually due to pre-existing genetic variation that had no effect until…

Check out the August issue of G3! Table of Contents Genome Reports Whole Genome Sequencing of the Braconid Parasitoid Wasp Fopius arisanus, an Important Biocontrol Agent of Pest Tepritid Fruit Flies Scott M. Geib, Guang Hong Liang, Terence D. Murphy, Sheina B. Sim G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics August 2017 7: 2407-2411; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.117.040741 Comparative Genomics of Two Sequential…

Rice is one of the most important food crops on earth. Like many other plants, the genome of this critical global species is dominated by transposable elements—selfish genes that multiply themselves to the detriment of their host. In the June issue of G3, Zhang and Gao analyze the genomic long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposon content…

Check out the August issue of GENETICS by looking at the highlights or the full table of contents! ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Evolving Mistranslating tRNAs Through a Phenotypically Ambivalent Intermediate in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pp. 1865–1879 M. D. Berg, K. S. Hoffman, J. Genereaux, S. Mian, R. S. Trussler, D. B. Haniford, P. O´Donoghue, and C. J. Brandl It is increasingly apparent that the…

GENETICS Editor-in-Chief Mark Johnston introduces a new peer review training program for early career scientists. “Just tell them what you think of them.” That was the response of one of my mentors when I asked him how I should review grant applications. I was a newly-minted Assistant Professor and had been asked to sit on an NIH study section. I…

Over twenty years ago, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) let scientists successfully clone the first mammal—Dolly the sheep. Despite advances since then, the efficiency of this process remains low. In the July issue of G3, Srirattana and St. John report a method to deplete cattle donor cells of mitochondrial DNA and efficiently generate blastocysts from…

They rattle as warning, but during the hunt their strike is silent and sudden. Any rabbit or mouse targeted by a rattlesnake is doomed—the snake’s bite carries a paralyzing venom. The toxins in this venom are proteins encoded by a large gene family that arose by gene duplication. In the July issue of GENETICS, Margres…

Inheriting a trait from a grandparent doesn’t always involve their DNA sequences. In many organisms, some traits can be passed down for multiple generations via non-sequence based mechanisms, a phenomenon called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The most familiar example is that human disease risk might be influenced by the lifestyle of a person’s grandparents. But by…