Nature Genetics
34, 363 (2003)
doi:10.1038/ng0803-363
Touching baseQuestions? Thoughts? Ideas: email us at ngfeedback@natureny.com Mutant of the Month
For the August MoM, we toast Bar. The mutant was discovered in 1913 as a spontaneous dominant mutation that gives flies small, narrow eyes. It fascinated early geneticists, because, unlike all the other mutations that had been discovered, it reverted at a very high frequency to give flies with normal round eyes. Stranger still, Bar could further mutate to 'ultra-Bar', a mutation producing an even smaller eye, but wild-type flies never mutated directly to ultra-Bar. From a remarkable series of experiments in the 1920s, Thomas H. Morgan and Alfred Sturtevant deduced that the Bar mutation was a tandem duplication of a chromosomal segment and that Bar reverted to wild-type or changed to ultra-Bar by unequal crossing-over during meiosis. In Bar homozygotes, unequal exchange between tandem repeats gives rise to recombinant chromosomes with one copy of the repeat (reversion to wild-type) or three copies (change to ultra-Bar). These days, most fly geneticists know Bar simply as a handy visible marker. It should be equally famous for the role it played in discovering tandem duplications, unequal exchange and the expansion and contraction of repeated gene arrays. MS
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RIP Worm Breeder's Gazette
At this year's International C. elegans conference, held in early July at UCLA, the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center (CGC) announced the imminent end of the Worm Breeder's Gazette (WBG). First published in 1975, the WBG has served as the worm community's newsletter, providing a forum for news, recruitment, methods and research before its publication in peer-reviewed journals. At its peak, the Gazette totaled nearly 100 pages, was published 2−3 times per year and was compulsory reading for worm researchers. In recent years, however, members of the rapidly growing—and increasingly competitive—worm community have been less inclined to share their data openly before publication in a journal. Citing dwindling submissions and subscriptions and the redundancy of information contained in the WBG and the different worm websites, the CGC expects that this years' WBG containing the genetic map will be the last. DG
The revolution will be televised
Over the past two months, efforts by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) to make all scientific literature freely accessible to any who care to gander have taken a few dramatic turns. The group is now airing a 30-second television commercial in Boston, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. The deliberately humorous spot takes place some time in the future and gets right to the heart of their argument: "In the year 2003, the Public Library of Science made it possible for people all over the world to have access to the latest scientific discoveries. Shortly thereafter, things began to change." Then the gentleman featured in the ad flies from his front lawn (unaided by an aircraft). In Washington, Congressman Martin Sabo of Minnesota has announced that he will introduce the Public Access to Science Act, which would deny copyright protection to all "scientific work substantially funded by the federal government." The act, which is intended to bolster free access to scientific material, will presumably favor a pay-as-you-play model like that of the PLoS. But such a model probably depends on funding agencies paying much of the publishing tab, with advertising picking up the slack. It isn't yet clear if that model is feasible or sustainable independent of philanthropic monies or if it will be proven to be before such a bill could become law. Over one year ago, the Nature Publishing Group changed its policy so that authors retain copyright to their work, are free to reuse their papers in any of their future printed work, and have the right to post a copy of the published paper on their own websites. We can't fly yet though. MS
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It's a filly
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XY, Inc., a Colorado-based biotech company, recently announced the birth of First Lady, the first sex-selected offspring of the world's first sex-selected mare (Call Me Madam, pictured here with her new foal) and the world's first sex-selected stallion (Augustus Primus). In the 1990s, USDA and Colorado State scientists patented a flow cytometric method to sex-select sperm, which, when combined with an approach that allowed low-dose artificial insemination, led to the advent of equine sex selection. The birth of First Lady suggests that the method has no adverse effects on fertility and raises the prospects of XY, Inc., which estimates a market of at least $300 million a year in the US alone. President and CEO Dr. Mervyn Jacobson explains that there is significant demand for greater certainty in replacing prized but aging stallions and mares with offspring of the same sex. Female horses are generally desired in the polo industry, because of a perception that they learn faster than males. As for show horses, males are particularly prized, thanks to their overall strength. XY, Inc. is now setting up horse breeding facilities in Texas and Argentina, and it aims to develop the technology for other animals, including some endangered species. AP
TouchingBase written by David Gresham, Alan Packer and Michael Stebbins.
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