Science & Publishing

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…

Check out the July issue of G3! INVESTIGATIONS Multiple Conserved Heteroplasmic Sites in tRNA Genes in the Mitochondrial Genomes of Terrestrial Isopods (Oniscidea) Christopher H. Chandler, Myriam Badawi, Bouziane Moumen, Pierre Grève, and Richard Cordaux G3 July 2015 5:1317-1322; Early Online April 24, 2015, doi:10.1534/g3.115.018283 Abstract | Full Text | Full Text (PDF) | Supporting…

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.…

Check out the Genetics Society of America award winners’ essays in the July issue of GENETICS! The awardees share inspiration, observations, and predictions about their fields. Nominations are now open for the 2016 GSA awards through September 18.   Edward Novitski Prize Sue Biggins Under Tension: Kinetochores and Basic Research “It is […] easy to…

The Genetics Society of America and the GSA journals are pleased to welcome two new science writing interns to our team! Meet Sarah Bay and Kayleigh O’Keeffe; you’ll be seeing a lot of their writing right here at Genes to Genomes. We asked them to tell us a little about themselves: Sarah Bay: I’m a rising sixth year…

Directly observing evolution in nature is often impossible. But biologists who use experimental systems to study these processes have the luxury of observing the fine details directly, controlling the conditions, and even replicating the results. In the age of genomics, experimental approaches to ecology and evolution have become particularly powerful for genetic model systems, including…

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…