Articles tagged Genetics Journal
(337 results)

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…

Check out the July issue of GENETICS by looking at the highlights or the full table of contents! ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS The nucleoporin Nup2 contains a meiotic-autonomous region that promotes the dynamic chromosome events of meiosis, pp. 1319-1337 Daniel B. Chu, Tatiana Gromova, Trent A. C. Newman, and Sean M. Burgess Chromosomes are organized in the nucleus to accommodate multiple functions.…

For people with alcohol dependence, withdrawal symptoms can cause relapse. Some physical symptoms—such as seizures, delirium tremens, and heart rhythm abnormalities—can be fatal, but even non-life-threatening symptoms like anxiety and confusion can trigger relapse. The changes in the nervous system that underlie withdrawal symptoms may involve ion channels in the Slo family. The function of…

In critical situations, communication can mean the difference between life and death. If our house goes up in flames, we don’t need to smell smoke to be alarmed as long as someone yells, “Fire!” This isn’t unique to humans; even creatures with much less sophisticated means of sharing information have ways of telling each other…

Taking probiotics might be the latest health fad, but for people with inflammatory bowel diseases, the microbiome is a more serious matter. With these autoimmune diseases, the composition of the gut microbiome can have critical health consequences. In the June issue of GENETICS, Mistry et al. use fruit flies to determine whether immune system activity…

Palm fronds crunch under a researcher’s foot as she hikes through a rainforest in Madagascar looking for a spot to release a tiny, omnivorous ball of fur with bulging eyes—a mouse lemur. This creature, the smallest type of primate, is an important research subject: it has just yielded a blood sample, skin cells, and an…

Changing where the polyA tail is added to an mRNA transcript can fine-tune the tissue-specific expression of many genes, reports a Caenorhabditis elegans study published in the June issue of GENETICS. Blazie et al. show alternative polyadenylation (APA) allows transcripts to evade microRNA (miRNA) silencing in some tissues, allowing for tissue-specific expression of those genes.…

Whether a thunderclap drives your dog to cower behind the couch or leaves it unfazed may be determined in part by genetics. In the June issue of GENETICS, Ilska et al. analyze genetic contributors to canine personality traits—such as fear of loud noises—using owners’ reports of their pets’ behavior. The researchers chose this survey-based method…

Fascinating discoveries sometimes emerge from the most daunting of experimental roadblocks. Designed to generate over 1,000 recombinant inbred mice lines for genetic mapping, the Collaborative Cross (CC) project unearthed astounding variation in male fertility when nearly 95% of the highly inbred CC lines went extinct. As part of the Multiparental Populations series in the June…

Check out the June issue of GENETICS by looking at the highlights or the full table of contents! ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Alternative polyadenylation directs tissue-specific miRNA targeting in Caenorhabditis elegans somatic tissues, pp. 757-774 Stephen M. Blazie, Heather C. Geissel, Henry Wilky, Rajan Joshi, Jason Newbern, and Marco Mangone Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is observed in virtually all metazoans and…

Multiparental populations (MPPs) have brought a new era in mapping complex traits, as well as new analytical challenges. To face these challenges and encourage innovation, the GSA journals launched the ongoing Multiparental Populations series in 2014. This month’s issues of GENETICS and G3 feature a bumper 16 MPP articles, timed to celebrate a new easy-to-use…