GENETICS is published by the Genetics Society of America, a scholarly society that seeks to deepen our understanding of the living world by advancing our understanding of genetics. Since 1916, GENETICS has published high-quality, original research presenting novel findings bearing on genetics and genomics. The journal publishes empirical studies of organisms ranging from microbes to humans, as well as theoretical work.
- Investigation using simple chemical reaction networks to implement stochastic switches that map gene products to phenotypes, and investigate the impact of structurally distinct mappings on the evolution of phenotypic heterogeneity
Rockenbach et al. 2016, Positive Selection in Rapidly Evolving Plastid–Nuclear Enzyme Complexes
- "A massive excess of nonsynonymous substitutions between species relative to levels of intraspecific polymorphism indicated a history of strong positive selection (particularly in CLP genes)."
- "We present an exact solution to compute the population size as a function of time based on distributions of coalescent times of samples of any size."
- "A quantitative understanding of the fitness effects of mutations virtually unseen by selection has remained an untapped opportunity. Here, we analyzed the fitness of 43 sequenced MA lines of the multi-chromosome bacterium Burkholderia cenocepacia that had each undergone 5554 generations of MA and accumulated an average of 6.73 spontaneous mutations. Most lineages exhibited either neutral or deleterious fitness in three different environments in comparison with their common ancestor"
- Looked at whole genome resequencing data to characterize and compare genome-wide patterns of nucleotide polymorphism, site frequency spectrum, and population-scaled recombination rates in three species of Populus
- Concluded that Differences in effective population sizes and rates of recombination largely explain the disparate magnitudes and signatures of linked selection that we observe among species
Genomic Patterns of Geographic Differentiation in Drosophila simulans
- Examined genomic patterns of genetic differentiation between northen and southern populations of D. simulans, in particular looking for evidence parallel differentiation.
- Strongest support for parallel differentiation is in genomic regions that are associated with regulation.
- Comparisons to Drosophila melanogaster yielded potential candidate genes involved in local adaptation in both species, providing insight into common selective pressures and responses
The Role of Recombination in Evolutionary Rescue
- Thought provoking article exploring the dynamics of recombination and adaptation. Recombination can bring favorable gene combination together but can also break them up. If a sudden environmental shift occurs, how does recombination play into the survival (or extinction) of a species?
- Something for those are interested in mechanisms of recombination and molecular biology in general
Estimating Relatedness in the Presence of Null Alleles Kang Huang
- Provides a framework for how to estimate relatedness when there may be null alleles present, which can cause over or under representation of the degree of relatedness