Science & Publishing

A vast number of species depend on sexual reproduction for survival. Sex facilitates adaptation and rids populations of deleterious mutations. Despite the benefits of this process, sex can be remarkably costly and disrupt already advantageous genetic combinations. Only 20% of fungal species have been observed to reproduce sexually, and a long-standing mystery for researchers is…

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a disorder characterized by chronic respiratory distress that has a history of going undiagnosed. Combined whole-exome sequencing (WES) and copy-number variant (CNV) analysis can aid in diagnosing patients with PCD, according to research published in G3 this month. PCD arises from mutations in cilia-associated genes—and results from the paralysis of…

Mark Blaxter (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh) reports on the “Caenorhabditis Genomes Project” workshop at GSA’s recent 20th International C. elegans Meeting. Caenorhabditis elegans, affectionately referred to as “the worm,” is one of the prettiest and most informative of the model organisms. It is see-through, has a simple lifecycle and a remarkably simple anatomy,…

The August issue of GENETICS is out now! Check out the Highlights below or the full Table of Contents here. ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Characterizing race/ethnicity and genetic ancestry for 100,000 subjects in the genetic epidemiology research on adult health and aging (GERA) cohort, pp. 1285–1295 Yambazi Banda, Mark N. Kvale, Thomas J. Hoffmann, Stephanie E. Hesselson, Dilrini Ranatunga, Hua Tang, Chiara Sabatti, Lisa…

The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to be a founding member of the Plant Science Research Network (PSRN), which was launched earlier this week. This effort, supported by a Research Coordination Network award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), will seek to unite the plant science community and to harness its collective vision…

Check out the August issue of G3! Perspectives Exome Sequencing: Current and Future Perspectives Amanda Warr, Christelle Robert, David Hume, Alan Archibald, Nader Deeb, and Mick Watson G3 August 2015 5:1543-1550; Early Online July 2, 2015, doi:10.1534/g3.115.018564 Full Text | Full Text (PDF) Investigations Identification of Wnt Pathway Target Genes Regulating the Division and Differentiation of…

For Lake Whitefish, history has repeated itself. Across the St. John River region that spans Québec and Maine, these freshwater fish have continually evolved in the same way. Within the many individual lakes in this area, Lake Whitefish have diverged into two groups differentiated by size and body shape. These two groups, known as “dwarf”…

The sticky fruit of the date palm has a tangled history. New research in G3 explores the palm’s genetic diversity and traces its earliest cultivation to at least two distinct regions in North Africa and the Arabian Gulf. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is one of the world’s oldest cultivated trees and has close ties…

Technical tips and progress on worm CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering   Today’s guest post was contributed by Mike Boxem, Daniel Dickinson, and Alexandre Paix. Mike Boxem is a group leader at Utrecht University. His interests include technology development, systems biology, and cell polarity. Daniel Dickinson is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of North Carolina.  His interests include…

Bdelloid rotifers have been veiled in mystery for decades. Despite extensive studies of this class of tiny freshwater invertebrates, no one has observed any trace of sex: no proven males, hermaphrodites, mating, or meiosis. Unlike other asexual organisms, which tend to be short-lived in evolutionary history, the apparently asexual bdelloid rotifers have managed to persist…

If not for a single-nucleotide mutation, each kernel on a juicy corn cob would be trapped inside an inedible casing as tough as a walnut shell. In the July issue of GENETICS, Wang et al. identify an amino acid substitution that was key to the development of the so-called “naked” kernels that characterize modern corn…