Articles tagged Genetics Journal
(279 results)

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…

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…

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…

Allelic expression in the mouse genome is surprisingly unbalanced, according to new research published in the June issue of GENETICS. The factors that determine how a gene is expressed in a given cell are complex. After all, every mammalian cell contains two copies of each gene, and both versions of that gene, called alleles, play…

The July issue of GENETICS is out now! Check out the Highlights below of the full Table of Contents here. And don’t miss the essays by winners of 2015 GSA Honors and Awards!   ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Fine mapping causal variants with an approximate Bayesian method using marginal test statistics, pp. 719–736 Wenan Chen, Beth R.…

In time for the 20th International C. elegans Meeting, GENETICS has published the next in its series of model organism education Primers. Ann Corsi, Bruce Wightman, and Marty Chalfie introduce Caenorhabditis elegans and the many features that make it an outstanding experimental system. The authors describe the basic biology, genetics, anatomy, genomics, ecology, and evolution…

By the time President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative in January 2015, the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) cohort was already a trailblazing example of this new approach to medical research. GERA is a group of more than 100,000 members of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Plan who consented to…

Patients seeking certainty in genetic tests, such as tests for inherited susceptibility to cancer, often receive a perplexing result. Many people learn they carry a “variant of unknown significance” of a disease-linked gene. Such variants might—or equally might not—increase disease risk. In the latest issue of GENETICS, Starita et al. characterized nearly 2000 variants of…

The June issue of GENETICS is out now! Check out the Highlights below or the full Table of Contents here.   ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Cortical folding of the primate brain: an interdisciplinary examination of the genetic architecture, modularity, and evolvability of a significant neurological trait in pedigreed baboons (Genus Papio), pp. 651–665 Elizabeth G. Atkinson, Jeffrey Rogers,…

The vibrant passion-vine butterfly species Heliconius erato doesn’t taste as good as it looks. The flesh of this South and Central American species accumulates toxic compounds to discourage would-be predators, who quickly learn to associate the butterflies’ unpleasant taste with their bold red warning colors and patterns. But H. erato isn’t the only species that…