We are pleased to announce the election of four new leaders to the GSA Board of Directors:

2024 Vice President/2025 President

Brenda Andrews

Professor, University of Toronto

It’s an honor to continue my association with the Society by serving as Vice President of the Board of Directors. I have broad knowledge of the ongoing activities of the Society and see more opportunities for expanding the GSA profile internationally, including outreach to scientists in geographic regions underserved by major societies. The current International Seminar Series and this year’s International C. Elegans Conference in Glasgow are great examples of international outreach, and these types of activities should be expanded.

I will prioritize support for early- and mid-career researchers, in recognition of the challenges they face. GSA can help scientists by providing mentorship, training, and increased advocacy efforts whether for funding or communicating the value of basic research. It is important that the next generation of scientists see value in the activities supported by the Society, including our journals, which face challenges in light of the rapidly evolving landscape of academic publishing. Here, we must continue to foster relationships with authors, improving the visibility of their work, and helping to raise the profiles of our journals. All of our work must be considered in the context of GSA’s ongoing commitment to inclusivity. Here, the Society may wish to work with other groups to enable access to genetics and genomics research by young people from under-represented groups. I found that a program I started at the Donnelly Centre that supported visits to labs by local high school classes from less privileged parts of Toronto was very impactful.

Times have changed and so must GSA. I hope to learn from and listen to you as we shape GSA together.

Director

Arun Sethuraman

Associate Professor, San Diego State University

I am honored to be elected to the GSA Board of Directors. I have served as an Associate Editor at G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics since 2017 and on GSA’s Conference Committee since 2021 as a representative of the population, evolutionary, and quantitative genetics group, and my work includes contributions to a recent training grant submitted to fund early-career and historically excluded geneticists attending TAGC 2024. I look forward to serving the GSA membership in an active Directorial role. As an early-career researcher at a Minority Serving Institution, I see this as an invaluable opportunity for me to be the voice of a largely underrepresented group of researchers in the Society. I am thrilled to have this opportunity to join a dedicated and diverse team of geneticists, editorial board members, and Society staff who are actively working to change the face and representation of our field.

My commitment to serving on GSA’s Board comes with a push to address five key issues that are close to my heart: (1) developing important training resources to actively involve undergraduates in genetics and genomics research as part of GSA’s catalog of activities and conferences; (2) changing how we teach fundamentals of genetics with exclusionary language by organizing a GSA community-wide effort to crowdsource and develop a new teaching paradigm for topics such as transmission, sex determination, polygenic selection, and genome-wide association studies; (3) interfacing with the equity and inclusion and conference committees in continuing to assess GSA’s membership demographic to build actionable items to increase participation of a diverse audience at all GSA conferences and to recruit and train a diverse group of editors, reviewers, and members; (4) actively featuring methods tutorials and blurbs of published work on the Genes to Genomes blog, specifically highlighting the work of early-career researchers, graduate and undergraduate students; and (5) increasing GSA’s representation at undergraduate and minority-focused conferences (e.g. SACNAS meetings, ABRCMS, Beckman Symposia).

Director

Eyleen O’Rourke

Associate Professor, University of Virginia

I bring to this role a strong background in molecular genetics research, having published in reputable journals, and presented my work at national and international conferences. Additionally, my experience as a teacher and mentor has enriched my understanding of the educational needs within our community. I pledge to collaborate with fellow board members and the broader GSA membership to advance our shared goals. I will listen to your feedback, actively seek your input, and work hard to represent your interests. I humbly request your support in this endeavor.

My work will be grounded in three core principles:

1. Advancing Genetics Research: I believe that supporting and promoting cutting-edge genetics research is core to our society’s mission. I will actively foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among GSA members. I propose initiatives such as promoting the selection of unpublished work for oral presentation at GSA-organized conferences. Additionally, I will advocate for increased research funding and opportunities, catering to the needs of both early-career and established researchers.
2. Education and Outreach: Genetics should transcend the confines of the laboratory. In an era where the public does not trust lifesaving vaccines, I am committed to enhancing the society’s educational initiatives. I will work on programs that promote genetics literacy and support science education at all levels. By bridging the gap between scientific discoveries and public understanding, we can strengthen our society’s impact.
3. Diversity and Inclusion: Science works at its best when it reflects the diversity of our broader community. As a first-generation high-school graduate and Latina, I have dedicated the past decade to learn, teach, and champion inclusive research and teaching practices. I have promoted minorities both locally and internationally. I pledge to carry this dedication into GSA, advocating for programs that support underrepresented groups and nations in genetics. I will work diligently to foster an inclusive environment where every voice is not only heard but valued.

Together, we can advance genetics research, education, and inclusivity. Thank you for consideration, and I look forward to the opportunity to serve you.

Director

Jason Stajich

Professor, University of California, Riverside

I am honored to have the opportunity to serve on the Board of Directors of GSA. The Society has enabled many opportunities in my career, and I am eager to contribute back. I first became a GSA member in graduate school and was completely hooked on the community and research after attending my first Fungal Genetics conference. I have served as an Associate Editor at GENETICS since 2018, and previously contributed to conferences by sitting on the Neurospora and Fungal Genetics Policy Committees. I am currently a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology where I have taught in the fields of Genomics, Microbiology, and Bioinformatics for the past 14 years. I currently serve as Vice Chair of my department and previously have served the campus faculty as Chair of the Academic Senate and as chair of the Graduate Council. I am excited to contribute to the Society’s efforts in building training and mentorship for early career scientists, helping shape the advocacy for science and genetics in funding and policy decisions, and providing perspectives on the community’s needs to advance new research systems and questions.

As a member of the Board, I will continue to champion the value and importance of diverse research systems and diverse research communities to address fundamental understandings of genetics and biology. I am an omnivore of biological research systems and believe there are strengths in a collection of computational and experimental approaches across a variety of organisms. My own draw to science was found in the satisfaction of problem solving, and I will contribute my efforts to the Society as we consider different problems such as the public perception of science, retaining and recruiting a broad representation of individuals to work in our field, or the creativity needed in how societies navigate changes in journal publication strategies. The GSA Journals have been a home for my publications and the conferences and members have been a strong and supportive community for my research and development. If elected, I would dedicate the time and energy to help sustain and grow our society.

We are pleased to announce the GSA Poster Award winners from the 31st Fungal Genetics Conference!

Congratulations to all!

Jorge Lightfoot, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center  

Fungal hypoxia adaptation is critical for the establishment of keratitis

vayu maini rekdal, UC Berkeley

CRISPR-Cas9 engineering of A. oryzae for meat-like flavor and appearance

Amber Matha, University of Georgia

Sre1, a transcription factor controlling ergosterol biosynthesis, stimulates response to nickel, an important micronutrient for fungi

Carla Gonçalves, Vanderbilt University

A diversified metabolic toolkit in budding yeasts linked to ecological adaptation

Elizabeth Gaylord, Washington University in St. Louis

The phosphatase Sac1 mediates capsule secretion in Cryptococcus neoformans

Asiya Gusa, Duke University

Transposon mobilization elevated by heat stress causes genome-wide mutations in the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus deneoformans

Mona Pokharel, Rutgers University

Characterization of the bHLH family transcription factor for their function in inositol metabolism regulation in Cryptococcus neoformans

David Goich, University at Buffalo

Gcn2 compensates for the absence of Hog1 in Cryptococcus neoformans

Nicola Case, University of Toronto

Global Analysis of Circuitry Governing Candida albicans Morphogenesis within Host Immune Cells

Antonio Serrano, Université Côte d’Azur

Hyphal branch formation in the opportunistic human pathogen Candida albicans

Diana Gomez De La Cruz, The Sainsbury Laboratory

Convergent recognition of the Magnaporthe oryzae host specificity determinant PWL2 in divergent grass species

Ben Auxier, Wageningen University & Research 

Association of nonself recognition and an NLR like locus in Coprinopsis cinerea

Four GSA communities are excited to meet in person in 2022 — and to experiment with hybrid conferences that combine the benefits of online and in-person meetings.

After two years of online meetings of all kinds, we are thrilled to return to scientific conversations in person! In 2022, many of us will be together again, enjoying the science—and the company—at our regular in-person conferences with virtual attendance options. #Fungal22 and #PEQG22 will take place at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California and #Dros22 will be in San Diego, California. #Yeast22 will be held in person at a location to be announced soon. All four organizing committees are working hard on creating can’t-miss programs to reunite and recharge their communities.

A few of the things we have missed most about scientific conferences “in real life” include meeting new colleagues at random, building stronger relationships with old colleagues, having unscheduled but in-depth conversations, discovering amazing talks far outside our specialties, and being able to dedicate focused time to the meeting away from everyday life. The intellectual buzz of several intense days of science at a GSA meeting is an enriching experience that has immediate results: new ideas, new collaborations, new jobs, new friends. 

Of course, we learned a lot from our experiments with online conferences in 2020 and 2021. For example, having the talks recorded ended the ubiquitous fear of missing out on something exciting in a concurrent session. And more people were able to ask questions via chat than was ever possible via a microphone. Most importantly, we learned that the virtual format could be more inclusive, lowering barriers to participation.

So, in 2022, GSA is leading the way in conference innovation  once again, this time with offering virtual attendance options alongside the full in-person conference, including opportunities to present online and access talk recordings, posters, and professional development events. While there is no way for us to completely replicate the in-person experience online, we hope that these select virtual options will translate to new “hybrid vigor” for GSA conferences by opening the experience to remote participants and enhancing the experience for those on site.

This flexibility seems even more critical while we continue to endure the uncertainty and risks of a pandemic. Because we understand that making future travel plans is difficult right now, we are adopting a flexible registration policy that will allow registrants to change from the in-person to virtual options (or vice versa) up until the month before the meeting.

As scientists, we all know that experiments come with costs. In this case, the new format has much higher labor, contractor, equipment, and technology costs than either an in-person or an online-only event. Note that the 2022 conferences are not expected to break even.

The past 18 months of conference experiments have been financially costly for the GSA, but also rewarding. Crucially, we have invested in these trials in order to maintain community connections and scientific contributions in a time of need. Despite the anticipated losses, we consider the virtual attendance option in 2022 to be an important step in learning how to balance the needs of in-person and online participants. We are excited to see what happens and to continue to evolve how scientists meet and exchange ideas.

2021 GSA Executive Committee

Hugo Bellen, President

E. Jane Hubbard, Vice-President

Denise J. Montell, Immediate Past President

Erika L. Matunis, Secretary

Michael Buszczak, Treasurer

Steven Munger, Member at Large

Tracey DePellegrin, GSA Executive Director

Congratulations to all the winners of poster awards at the 2019 Fungal Genetics Conference!

Fabrizio Alberti
Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Warwick

“The aim of my research is to understand how antibiotic and anticancer terpenoid molecules are made by basidiomycete fungi.”

María Angélica Bravo Núñez
Graduate student, Stowers Institute for Medical Research

“I study how parasitic DNA elements sabotage the process of making gametes (e.g. sperm) to learn about the origins of infertility.”

Sara Calhoun
Postdoc, DOE Joint Genome Institute

“We developed an automated metabolic modeling tool and applied it to compare the metabolism of diverse fungal species.”

Ci Fu
Postdoc, Duke University

“In this study, we showed that a global human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus deneoformans, utilizes a unique sexual cycle to upregulate the pheromone response pathway and enhance competitiveness in the courtship phase of mating.”

Raphael Gabriel
PhD Candidate, Lawrence Berkeley Lab

“I study determining the factors that enable high cellulase production with the fungus Thermoascus aurantiacus.”

Claudio Greco
Postdoc, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“I study biosynthesis of secondary metabolites in fungi.”

Murat Can Kalem
PhD Student, University at Buffalo, SUNY

“I am working on protein arginine methylation and how this post-translational modification regulates long non-coding RNAs in Cryptococcus neoformans.”

Daniela Nordzieke
Postdoc, Georg August University Goettingen

“I study how two distinct propagules of a fungal maize pathogen explore specific infection strategies and lifestyles.”

Sébastien Ortiz
PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison

“I study characterizing triggers of spore germination of human fungal pathogens.”

Klaas Schotanus
Postdoc Associate, Duke University

“I studied the deletion of a centromere results in unstable neocentromeres, at elevated temperature chromosome fusion occurs and this leads to 13 instead of 14 chromosomes.”

Rebecca Spanner
PhD Student, North Dakota State University

“I study identifying key mutations for fungicide resistance in an important fungal pathogen of sugar beet, Cercospora beticola.”

Javier Tabima
Postdoc Scholar, Oregon State University

“I study fungal evolutionary genomics and population genetics”.

Andrew Urquhart
Postdoc, University of Melbourne

“I study identification and characterization of the gene cluster for the synthesis of viriditoxin in Paecilomyces variotii.”

Ian Will
PhD Student, University of Central Florida

“I study a behavior-manipulating fungal parasite of ants, and is seeking to characterize the molecular mechanisms and underlying fungal genes driving this parasitic manipulation.”

Prize recognizes extraordinary creativity and ingenuity in genetics research.

Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD of Duke University is the recipient of the 2019 Genetics Society of America (GSA) Edward Novitski Prize. Heitman is honored for his work on human fungal pathogens and for identifying the molecular targets of widely-used immunosuppressive drugs. The latter work proved to be a seminal contribution to the discovery of the TOR pathway, which regulates cell growth and activity in response to nutrients.

The Novitski Prize recognizes an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in the solution of significant problems in genetics research. “Joe is an exceptionally imaginative geneticist, and his work has often been paradigm changing,” says William K. Holloman, a Professor at Cornell University Weill Medical College and one of the scientists who nominated Heitman for the Novitski Prize.

Heitman helped kickstart the study of the previously unknown TOR pathway with a series of inspired experiments during postdoctoral research at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, under the mentorship of Michael N. Hall and in collaboration with Rao Movva from the pharmaceutical company Sandoz (now Novartis).

The story began with an unmet medical need.  In the 1980s and 1990s, surgeons developing organ transplant procedures were finally starting to see success. Thanks to newly discovered immune-suppressing drugs isolated from soil microbes, the doctors were able to prevent transplanted organs from being rejected by the patient’s immune system.

Yet despite the success of these important drugs, it was not clear how they worked. Although they targeted specific cells of the immune system, the drugs had originally been identified as antifungal chemicals. Heitman and his colleagues reasoned that this ability to kill fungi could be the key to understanding how the drugs worked in humans.

The microbes likely evolved to produce these natural product drugs to fend off fungal competitors in the soil. Perhaps, the team hypothesized, the mechanism by which they inhibited fungal growth would be the same by which they inhibited function of the immune system. After all, despite the obvious differences between fungi and ourselves, we all evolved from a common ancestor and share many components of our basic cellular machinery. That is why Heitman proposed an unconventional strategy for identifying the molecular targets of the new drugs: studying their effects on baker’s yeast.

As one of the best understood fungi, with many genetic research tools already available, yeast supplied a powerful method for honing in on targets of the drugs. The group investigated the effects on yeast of several transplant drugs, including a then-experimental compound named rapamycin.

Rapamycin turned out to have a similar effect on yeast cells as it did on human immune cells—blocking progress of the cell cycle. This not only supported their hypothesis, it made it possible for them to screen for the chemical’s molecular targets by looking for the yeast genes that made the cells vulnerable to rapamycin treatment.

Their strategy paid off quickly. Heitman isolated rapamycin-resistant yeast mutants, and identified three genes needed to make the yeast sensitive to the drug. Among them were two previously uncharacterized genes that they named TOR1 and TOR2, for “Target of Rapamycin” and tor, the German word for gateway (in honor of Basel’s medieval city gate Spalentor). The third gene encodes FKBP12, the cellular receptor that binds rapamycin to form a complex that inhibits TOR.

Spurred by the discovery of the fungal targets of rapamycin, other research groups later confirmed that the human version of these yeast genes, mTOR, was also the target of the drug’s immunosuppressive activity.

“Joe exploited yeast genetics in a creative, clever, and unique way, which ultimately led to the appreciation that immunosuppressive drugs work through a pathway that is conserved from yeast to humans. His work was instrumental in understanding this important network,” says colleague Sue Jinks-Robertson, a Professor at Duke University who nominated Heitman for the Novitski Prize.

Thanks to the subsequent work of many researchers, including Heitman, Tor proteins are now understood to be at the center of a critical pathway for both biology and medicine. Animals, plants, and fungi all use Tor proteins to sense nutrient levels and set in motion appropriate physiological responses. Without Tor, cell growth and division become uncoupled from nutrient status, which is why dysfunction of the pathway is implicated in many human disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, as well as the aging process.

As Heitman established his own research group, linking fundamental insights in fungal biology to medically important problems became a recurring theme in his work. He has made many contributions to our understanding of fungal species that cause diseases, including findings on how such fungi sense their environment, what factors affect their virulence, and how antifungal drugs work. His studies have defined fungal mating type loci, including their evolution and links to virulence, and illustrated convergent transitions from outcrossing to inbreeding in fungal pathogens of plants and animals.  He has led efforts to establish new genetic and genomic methods for studying pathogenesis in Cryptococcus species, which cause a range of life-threatening infections—and up to 15% of all AIDS-related deaths—but are of a quite different type than most other fungal pathogens of humans.

Studying Cryptococcus has also produced broader insights into how many other fungal diseases evolve and cause outbreaks. For example, Heitman’s work on Cryptococcus has contributed to a growing consensus that, contrary to previous assumptions, fungal pathogens have a robust sex life. His group even discovered an entirely new mode of fungal reproduction.

Like many fungi, Cryptococcus occurs as two different mating types. In the lab, one cell of each type can pair up to mate and sexually reproduce. But one of these two mating types is extremely rare in the wild, so Cryptococcus was thought to mostly go without sex—if it ever occurred at all. The vast majority of cells were thought to reproduce by splitting into genetic clones.

However, Heitman and colleagues found that Cryptococcus cells can mate with themselves by fusing with others of the same mating type or undergoing endoreplication to produce new offspring. This “unisexual reproduction” involves many of the same intricate series of steps as sexual reproduction, including the transition from haploid to diploid and the dividing up of chromosomes by meiosis to ensure offspring receive the correct final number. The main difference? Unisexual reproduction can occur between two genetically identical cells or genomes, such as “mother” and “daughter” cells that have just split by normal cell division.

But why go to all this trouble? Why not just keep multiplying by asexual division? The main evolutionary benefit of sex is to shuffle genetic variants in a population into new combinations. In unisexual reproduction, mixing around the genomes of two parents with already matching variants would make no difference—the offspring would have the same combinations as their parents.

Heitman’s research suggests an answer: their evidence shows unisexual reproduction can generate new genetic diversity by triggering new mutations. This allows fungal species that rarely engage in bisexual outcrossing an escape mechanism from the evolutionary dead end of endless clonal division.

Heitman and others are now studying the roles of sexual reproduction in the evolutionary dynamics of fungal pathogens to better understand how they spread, switch hosts, become more virulent, and a host of other important clinical questions, such as how the emerging pathogen Cryptococcus gattii expanded its geographic range to cause an ongoing outbreak in North America.

Heitman has been a GSA member since 1998, served as an editor for the GSA journal GENETICS 2011–2017, and has served on the GSA Conferences Committee since 2017. He has also served as a member of the Fungal Genetics Policy Committee from 2013–2019 including as chair of the Committee 2017–2019. The Prize will be presented at the 30th Fungal Genetics Conference, which will be held March 12–17, 2019, at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, CA. This will be the tenth consecutive Fungal Genetics Conference that Heitman has attended.

Heitman is the James B. Duke Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University and director of the Tri-Institutional Molecular Mycology and Pathogenesis Training Program.

The Novitski Prize recognizes a single experimental accomplishment or a body of work in which an exceptional level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity has been used to design and execute scientific experiments to solve a difficult problem in genetics. It recognizes the beautiful and ingenious experimental design and execution involved in genetics research. The Prize, established by the Novitski family and GSA, honors the memory of Edward Novitski (1918–2006), a Drosophila geneticist and lifelong GSA member who specialized in chromosome mechanics and meiosis through the construction of modified chromosomes.