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From the President's Desk
JAN/FEB 2006 From the President’s desk: 2006, the 75th anniversary of the Genetics Society of America, will be marked by a number of initiatives to reinvigorate the Society’s mission of promoting research and education in genetics. A highlight was the recently held GSA sponsored conference, “Genetic Analysis: From Model Organisms to Human Biology” in San Diego from January 5-7. This conference emphasized the importance of model organism research by illustrating the crucial contributions to human biology resulting from discoveries in these organisms. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported this conference both financially and by participation of key NIH administrators, including Jeremy M. Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. In addition to the superb science talks by international leaders the MOHB conference showcased other important and new GSA initiatives including education, public policy advocacy, graduate student support and recognition of outstanding model organism geneticists. Robin Wright, Education Committee chair, led a round table discussion on undergraduate education and the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy and the Congressional Liaison Committee sponsored a session on science advocacy and public policy. There was a mentor lunch to support graduate students and postdocs in the next steps of their careers, and the three GSA medals were presented during the banquet, with Victor Ambros receiving the GSA Medal, Fred Sherman the Beadle Award, and Masatoshi Nei the Morgan Award. (For research highlights at the meeting, see pages 6 and 7 of this issue.) The 75th anniversary will also usher in changes to our society’s journal, GENETICS. -
Genetics Society News
July 2008 . ISSUE 59 GENETICS SOCIETY NEWS www.genetics.org.uk IN THIS ISSUE Genetics Society News is edited by Steve Russell. Items for future issues should be sent to Steve Russell, preferably by email to • Genetics Society Epigenetics Meeting [email protected], or hard copy to Department of Genetics, • Genetics Society Sponsored Meetings University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EH. The Newsletter is published twice a year, with copy dates of 1st June and • Travel, Fieldwork and Studentship Reports 26th November. • John Evans: an Appreciation Cocoons of the parasitoid wasp Cotesia vestalis on cabbage leaf in Taiwan. From the • Twelve Galton Lectures fieldwork report by Jetske G. de Boer on page 36. • My Favourite Paper A WORD FROM THE EDITOR A word from the editor ow soon until the $1000 based on the results of tests we genome is actually with barely understand! Here in the Hus and individual UK there is currently a sequencing is widespread? The moratorium, adhered to by publication of increasing most insurers, on the use of numbers of individual human genetic testing information for genome sequences suggests assessing life insurance that we should start to consider applications. It is important some of the implications that this remains in place and associated with the availability its effectiveness is reviewed of personal genetic well before the current information. In this issue we moratorium expires in 2011. present two articles reflecting The Human Genetics on his issue: a report from a Commission Genetics Society sponsored (http://www.hgc.gov.uk) meeting recently held in monitor issues relating to Cambridge organised by The genetic discrimination in the Triple Helix, an international UK and are a point of contact undergraduate organisation, as for those with any concerns in the Millennium Technology Prize. -
Barbara Mcclintock
Barbara McClintock Lee B. Kass and Paul Chomet Abstract Barbara McClintock, pioneering plant geneticist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, is best known for her discovery of transposable genetic elements in corn. This chapter provides an overview of many of her key findings, some of which have been outlined and described elsewhere. We also provide a new look at McClintock’s early contributions, based on our readings of her primary publications and documents found in archives. We expect the reader will gain insight and appreciation for Barbara McClintock’s unique perspective, elegant experiments and unprecedented scientific achievements. 1 Introduction This chapter is focused on the scientific contributions of Barbara McClintock, pioneering plant geneticist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for her discovery of transposable genetic elements in corn. Her enlightening experiments and discoveries have been outlined and described in a number of papers and books, so it is not the aim of this report to detail each step in her scientific career and personal life but rather highlight many of her key findings, then refer the reader to the original reports and more detailed reviews. We hope the reader will gain insight and appreciation for Barbara McClintock’s unique perspective, elegant experiments and unprecedented scientific achievements. Barbara McClintock (1902–1992) was born in Hartford Connecticut and raised in Brooklyn, New York (Keller 1983). She received her undergraduate and graduate education at the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. In 1923, McClintock was awarded the B.S. -
Issue 84 of the Genetics Society Newsletter
JANUARY 2021 | ISSUE 84 GENETICS SOCIETY NEWS In this issue The Genetics Society News is edited by • Non-canonical Careers: Thinking Outside the Box of Academia and Industry Margherita Colucci and items for future • Celebrating the 35th anniversary of DNA fingerprinting issues can be sent to the editor by email • Genetics Society Summer Studentship Workshop 2020 to [email protected]. • 2020 Heredity best student-led paper prize winners The Newsletter is published twice a year, • Industrious Science: interview with Dr Paul Lavin with copy dates of July and January. Celebrating students’ achievements: 2020 Genetics Society Summer Studentship Workshop, 2020 Heredity best student-led paper prize. Page 30 A WORD FROM THE EDITOR A word from the editor Welcome to Issue 84 elcome to the latest issue of the Thinking Outside the Box of WGenetics Society Newsletter! Academia and Industry”. This little This issue is packed with great news vade mecum for careers in genetics of achievements and good science. The collects inspiring interviews led first Genetics Society virtual workshop by our very own Postgraduate for the 2020 Summer studentship saw Representative, Emily Baker. In exceptional contributions from the Emily’s words, these experiences attending students. You can read more “demonstrate how a PhD in genetics about participants’ experiences in the can be a platform for a career in just interviews with the talk’s winners in about anything. Pursuing a career the Feature section. in academia, industry, publishing or science communication could be for Many more prizes were awarded: you, but so could many others. Why Heredity journal announced the not take a career path less travelled 2020 Heredity best student-led paper by, it might make all the difference?” winners, and James Burgon’s Heredity podcast dedicated an episode to the Enjoy! first prize winner, with insights from Best wishes, Heredity Editor-in-Chief, Barbara Margherita Colucci Mable. -
Famous Female Scientists
Appendix B: Scientific Contributions of Thirteen Outstanding Female Scientists Scientific Contributions of Thirteen Outstanding Female Scientists Gerty Cori, with her husband, received international recognition for discovering how glucose converts to glycogen (Cori cycle). This husband and wife team won the 1947 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for “discovering the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen” (mechanism for blood glucose regulation). Cori’s later studies on enzymes and hormones advanced research in diabetes treatment, contributing new understandings that missing enzymes resulted from defective genes. This laid the foundation for future studies of genetic defects in humans. Her research profoundly affected diabetes treatment, allowing physicians to understand how the body stores glucose by converting it predominantly into glycogen, which the body then uses for energy. Despite her significant research, she fought discrimination and nepotism within the Gerty Radnitz Cori scientific community. In 1947, the same year she became the first American woman and the (1896–1954) third worldwide to receive a Nobel Prize in the sciences, she achieved full professor status in biochemistry at Washington University, St. Louis. In 1950, President Harry Truman appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Science Foundation. Considered the most famous of all women scientists, this Polish researcher “extraordinarie” was the first person (male or female) to win two Nobel Prizes. At age 16, she had already won a gold medal at the Russian lycée in Poland upon completion of her secondary education. In 1891, almost penniless, she began her education at the Sorbonne in Paris and later became the first woman professor to teach there. -
Mothers of Invention: Women in Technology
Mothers of Invention: Women in Technology n old adage counsels, “Maternity Rideout (AZT), M. Katherine Holloway and is a matter of fact… paternity is Chen Zhao (protease inhibitors), and Diane a matter of opinion.” And indeed, Pennica (tissue plasminogen activator).2 Awhen it comes to people, the evidence of By 1998, women accounted for 10.3 who physically bears the child is visible and percent of all U.S.–origin patents granted undeniable. With the gestation of ideas, annually. Innovation professionals believe this however, lineage is less clear. percentage will continue to increase. A recent The evidence for women’s role in survey of one thousand U.S. researchers technology has been obscured historically. yielded the names of twenty U.S. scientists Only two percent of the fi ve hundred Nobel under the age of forty who have demonstrated Prize Laureates recognized for scientifi c once-in-a-generation insight. Nine of them— achievement are women. As recently as the almost half—are women.3 Jennifer A. Kurtz early 1980s, U.S. Patent and Trademark Offi ce records show that only 2.8 percent of patents Research Fellow, Indiana went to women each year. This participation Business Research Center, rate did not differ much from the 1 percent or Women must Kelley School of Business, so of patents that went to women in the period increasingly pursue Indiana University from 1790 to 1895.1 Young women have had relatively few role science and models to encourage their pursuit of scientifi c and technological adventures. That pattern has technology to ensure begun to change as women are increasingly that the future needs present in all dimensions of the innovation life cycle: knowledge creation, technology transfer, for a skilled U.S. -
Balcomk41251.Pdf (558.9Kb)
Copyright by Karen Suzanne Balcom 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Karen Suzanne Balcom Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Discovery and Information Use Patterns of Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine Committee: E. Glynn Harmon, Supervisor Julie Hallmark Billie Grace Herring James D. Legler Brooke E. Sheldon Discovery and Information Use Patterns of Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine by Karen Suzanne Balcom, B.A., M.L.S. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2005 Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my first teachers: my father, George Sheldon Balcom, who passed away before this task was begun, and to my mother, Marian Dyer Balcom, who passed away before it was completed. I also dedicate it to my dissertation committee members: Drs. Billie Grace Herring, Brooke Sheldon, Julie Hallmark and to my supervisor, Dr. Glynn Harmon. They were all teachers, mentors, and friends who lifted me up when I was down. Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my committee: Julie Hallmark, Billie Grace Herring, Jim Legler, M.D., Brooke E. Sheldon, and Glynn Harmon for their encouragement, patience and support during the nine years that this investigation was a work in progress. I could not have had a better committee. They are my enduring friends and I hope I prove worthy of the faith they have always showed in me. I am grateful to Dr. -
100 Years of Genetics
Heredity (2019) 123:1–3 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-019-0230-2 EDITORIAL 100 years of genetics Alison Woollard1 Received: 27 April 2019 / Accepted: 28 April 2019 © The Genetics Society 2019 The UK Genetics Society was founded on 25 June 1919 and “biometricians”; the Genetical Society was very much a this special issue of Heredity, a journal owned by the society of Mendelians. Remarkably, 16 of the original 87 Society, celebrates a century of genetics from the perspec- members were women—virtually unknown in scientific tives of nine past (and present) presidents. societies at the time. Saunders was a vice president from its The founding of the Genetical Society (as it was then beginning and its 4th president from 1936–1938. Perhaps known) is often attributed to William Bateson, although it the new, and somewhat radical, ideas of “genetics” pre- was actually the brain child of Edith Saunders. The enthu- sented a rare opportunity for women to engage in research siasm of Saunders to set up a genetics association is cited in because the field lacked recognition in universities, and was the anonymous 1916 report “Botany at the British Asso- therefore less attractive to men. 1234567890();,: 1234567890();,: ciation”, Nature, 98, 2456, p. 238. Furthermore, the actual Bateson and Saunders (along with Punnett) were also founding of the Society in 1919 “largely through the energy influential in the field of linkage analysis (“partial coupling” as of Miss E.R Saunders” is reported (anonymously) in they referred to it at the time), having made several observa- “Notes”, Nature, 103, 2596, p. -
Annotated Bibliography: Women in Physics, Astronomy, and Related Disciplines
Annotated Bibliography: Women in Physics, Astronomy, and Related Disciplines Abir Am, Pnina and Dorinda Outram, eds. Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1787-1979. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Abir Am and Outram’s volume includes a collection of essays about women in science that highlight the intersection of personal and professional spheres. All of the articles argue that the careers of women scientists are influenced by their family lives and that their family lives are impacted because of their scientific careers. This text is significant in two ways: first, it is one of the earliest examples of scholarship that moves beyond the recovering women in science, but placing them in the context of their home and work environments. Second, it suggests that historians of science can no longer ignore the private lives of their historical subjects. This volume contains four articles relating to women in physics and astronomy: Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie’s “Marital Collaboration: An Approach to Science” (pages 104-125), Sally Gregory Kohlstedt’s “Maria Mitchell and the Advancement of Women in Science” (pages 129-146), Helena M. Pycior’s “Marie Curie’s ‘Anti-Natural Path’: Time Only for Science and Family” (pages 191-215), and Peggy Kidwell’s “Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin: Astronomy in the Family” (pages 216-238). As a unit, the articles would constitute and interesting lesson on personal and professional influences. Individually, the articles could be incorporated into lessons on a single scientist, offering a new perspective on their activities at work and at home. It complements Pycior, Slack, and Abir Am’s Creative Couples in the Sciences and Lykknes, Opitz, and Van Tiggelen’s For Better of For Worse: Collaborative Couples in the Sciences, which also look at the intersection of the personal and professional. -
Issue 82 of the Genetics Society Newsletter
JANUARY 2020 | ISSUE 82 GENETICS SOCIETY NEWS In this issue The Genetics Society News is edited by Margherita Colucci and items for future • Medal and Prize Lecture Announcements issues can be sent to the editor by email • “A Century of Genetics” conference to [email protected]. • Celebrating the centenary of Fisher 1918 The Newsletter is published twice a year, • Research and travel grant reports with copy dates of July and January. Speakers’ dinner at the “A Century of Genetics” conference, November 2019, Edinburgh. (Photo by Douglas Vernimmen) A WORD FROM THE EDITOR A word from the editor Welcome to Issue 82 elcome to the latest issue of reports in the Sectional Interest Wthe GenSoc Newsletter and Groups: Reports section. my first steps (pages?) as new editor. And why not (re)discovering another I am eager to start this journey with great milestone such as the publishing you through the latest Genetics of Fisher’s 1918 paper, “The correlation Society achievements and genetics between relatives on the supposition news! I would like to thank all of Mendelian inheritance”, recently GenSoc committee for giving me this reaching its centenary recurrence? opportunity. I am sure you will greatly enjoy the In this issue, I will bring you back to report in the Features section. the inspiring and lively atmosphere Enjoy! of the GenSoc meeting ‘A Century of Genetics’ in Edinburgh (November Best wishes, 2019) - a really big thanks to all of those Margherita Colucci who kindly contributed. Many Sectional Interest groups have been very active: you will find their In this issue, I will bring you back to the inspiring and lively atmosphere of the GenSoc meeting “A Century of Genetics” in Edinburgh (November 2019) - a really big thanks to all of those who kindly contributed. -
Timeline of Genomics (1901–1950)*
Research Resource Timeline of Genomics (1901{1950)* Year Event and Theoretical Implication/Extension Reference 1901 Hugo de Vries adopts the term MUTATION to de Vries, H. 1901. Die Mutationstheorie. describe sudden, spontaneous, drastic alterations in Veit, Leipzig, Germany. the hereditary material of Oenothera. Thomas Harrison Montgomery studies sper- 1. Montgomery, T.H. 1898. The spermato- matogenesis in various species of Hemiptera and ¯nds genesis in Pentatoma up to the formation that maternal chromosomes only pair with paternal of the spermatid. Zool. Jahrb. 12: 1-88. chromosomes during meiosis. 2. Montgomery, T.H. 1901. A study of the chromosomes of the germ cells of the Metazoa. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 20: 154-236. Clarence Ervin McClung postulates that the so- McClung, C.E. 1901. Notes on the acces- called accessory chromosome (now known as the \X" sory chromosome. Anat. Anz. 20: 220- chromosome) is male determining. 226. Hermann Emil Fischer(1902 Nobel Prize Laure- 1. Fischer, E. and Fourneau, E. 1901. UberÄ ate for Chemistry) and Ernest Fourneau report einige Derivate des Glykocolls. Ber. the synthesis of the ¯rst dipeptide, glycylglycine. In Dtsch. Chem. Ges. 34: 2868-2877. 1902 Fischer introduces the term PEPTIDES. 2. Fischer, E. 1907. Syntheses of polypep- tides. XVII. Ber. Dtsch. Chem. Ges. 40: 1754-1767. 1902 Theodor Boveri and Walter Stanborough Sut- 1. Boveri, T. 1902. UberÄ mehrpolige Mi- ton found the chromosome theory of heredity inde- tosen als Mittel zur Analyse des Zellkerns. pendently. Verh. Phys -med. Ges. WÄurzberg NF 35: 67-90. 2. Boveri, T. 1903. UberÄ die Konstitution der chromatischen Kernsubstanz. Verh. Zool. -
Perspectives
Copyright Ó 2007 by the Genetics Society of America Perspectives Anecdotal, Historical and Critical Commentaries on Genetics Edited by James F. Crow and William F. Dove R. A. Fisher’s 1943 Unravelling of the Rhesus Blood-Group System A. W. F. Edwards1 Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, United Kingdom VEN if R. A. Fisher’s elucidation of the human blood- binatorial skills and his relations with A. S. Wiener, and E group system Rhesus in terms of the three linked to add a personal coda. It is best to take first the diagram loci C, D, and E had not proved to be substantially (Figure 1) from Fisher (1947) because it explains the correct, it would still have been an outstanding example relationship between the original Rhesus notation and of the power of analytical thought to unravel a complex that proposed by Fisher. As Fisher writes, ‘‘We may repre- array of genetical data. In fact, as a recent review relates sent the eight heritable antigen complexes geometrically (Avent et al. 2006), D is one gene (carrying the D anti- as the corners of a cube, while the six elementary antigens gen) and C and E are different splicing forms of another are represented by the faces; each allelomorphic pair of (CE carrying the C or c antigens and the E or e antigens). antigens is then a pair of opposite faces, and the three Fisher’s solution is recognizable beneath the modern faces meeting in any point specify the antigens in each molecular detail. complex.’’ (Ry) and (CdE) are in parentheses because The story of the unravelling of the Rhesus puzzle is the anti-d antibody had not yet been discovered (nor has told in chapter 13 of Joan Fisher Box’s R.