Articles tagged Drosophila
(103 results)

Guest post by Julia Kreiner. #TAGC16 Shorts are brief summaries of presentations at The Allied Genetics Conference, a combined meeting of seven genetics research communities held July 13-17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. A common perception of evolution sees only slow and consistent genetic change over thousands of generations. But geneticists are increasingly shedding light on…

Last week at The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins provided an overview of model organism support from his agency. Collins used a new analysis performed by NIH staff to address concerns expressed by many of the model organism researchers gathered at TAGC, particularly a 2015 analysis by Michael…

Although some proteins have a single career, many—like Dis3—lead a double life. In the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, loss-of-function mutations in dis3 cause defects in mitosis, implying that Dis3 normally supports cell cycle progression. But perplexingly, results in humans suggest that Dis3 normally slows cell cycle progression: mutations that partially disable dis3 contribute to the development…

Model Organism Databases (MODs) and the Gene Ontology Consortium play a crucial “behind-the-scenes” role in the work of model organism geneticists and many other biomedical researchers. This guest post by the newly-formed Alliance of Genome Resources announces the group’s intention to integrate the efforts of the MODs and other genome resources. You can learn more…

New Faculty Profiles showcase GSA members who are establishing their first independent labs. If you’d like to be considered for a profile, please complete this form on the GSA website. Amanda Larracuente Assistant Professor (since 2015) Department of Biology University of Rochester Lab website Research program: Genomes are frequently in conflict with selfish DNAs – genetic…

While the textbook enhancer is often depicted just upstream of a gene, many enhancers  influence transcription from afar—some can activate genes a million base pairs away. Enhancers can even activate genes on a completely separate chromosome (i.e., in trans), a process called transvection. It’s not known how common transvection is, but an article in the…

Fruit flies that devote an excessive amount of time to grooming themselves could serve as a powerful tool for understanding the inherited disorder neurofibromatosis, type 1 (NF-1), report researchers in the latest issue of G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics.     NF-1 leads to the development of benign tumors in the peripheral nervous system. Common complications of  NF-1…

At the time of her death in 1912, Nettie Maria Stevens was a biologist of enough repute to be eulogized in the journal Science by future Nobelist Thomas Hunt Morgan and for her passing to be noted in The New York Times. In 1910 she had been listed among 1,000 leading American “men of science.”…

  Bess Frost submitted the second abstract for The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), less than 30 minutes after the first submission. Find out more about her work and why she’s coming to TAGC.   Bess Frost, PhD Assistant Professor Barshop Institute for Longevity & Aging Studies University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Faculty…

New Faculty Profiles showcase GSA members who are establishing their first independent labs. If you’d like to be considered for a profile, please complete this form on the GSA website.   Josefa Steinhauer Assistant Professor of Biology Yeshiva University Lab website   Research program: We are interested in lipid-mediated signaling in Drosophila. Phospholipids usually play structural…

In 1917, amidst the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, a bug-obsessed teenager in Kiev discovered a new species of ladybird beetle in the debris washed up on the banks of the flooding Dnieper River. The following year, he described the species in his first scientific publication. That 18-year old ladybug spotter —Theodosius Dobzhansky— would go…