SASTA President Rana Dajani discusses the need for diversity and introduces SASTA’s mission to advance science and technology in the Arab world.

The Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World (SASTA) is a non-profit organization in the US that strives to mobilize and catalyze the engagement of scientists, professionals, NGO’s, academic institutions, and professional societies to advance higher education, science, and research in Arab countries. SASTA’s objective is to contribute to the advancement of science, technology, higher education, and research in the Arab region through supporting scientific human capacity building, development of academic and research programs, and providing scientific, technical, and material support to local academics, scientists, and universities. SASTA seeks to achieve this objective by:

• Developing and maintaining a comprehensive database of Arab expatriate scientists and scientists in the Arab world—and developing tools that would enable the use of this database—as a catalyst for capacity building through networking and collaboration between scientists in the Arab world and abroad.
• Establishing partnerships with universities, NGOs, professional societies, and industries in and outside the region.
• Developing programs to train local scientists in specific research areas of special importance to their local society needs and/or national priorities
• Acting as an independent non-partisan scientific body on issues related to science and its advancement in the Arab region
• Promoting science-based programs on sustainable economic development and establishing a cooperation of sustainable science and technology between academic institutions, industry, and government.

To do good science we need to include everyone, because we are driven by diversity in many forms. For example, we need diversity in genetics to understand disease mechanisms and biological mechanisms. Recently Almarri et al. published research highlighting the importance of examining understudied populations to understand how humans adapted to agricultural development and desertification. The team, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Birmingham, and scientists in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia sequenced 137 complete human genomes from eight modern Middle Eastern populations, allowing them to map human evolution in the region from 100,000 years ago to the present day. 

Also recently published was a multicountry effort analyzing the genetics of COVID patients. The contribution of samples from those from the middle eastern lineage was very important to understanding the complexity of host genetic factors in COVID. The study revealed 13 loci in the human genome that are associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection or severe COVID-19. The study supported causal factors such as smoking and high body mass index. This was one of the largest genome-wide association studies (GWAS) ever performed; it included 50,000 COVID-19 patients and two million uninfected controls. The results will help reveal potential targets for future therapies. Such studies illustrate both the power of genetic studies for learning more about infectious disease and the need for diversity in such studies.

We also need diversity in opinions and perspectives; to think what no one has thought while observing the same phenomenon many have observed is the hallmark of being a scientist. 

To face the challenges of the 21st century, we need to work in teams and have the courage to cross disciplines. It is at the boundaries of disciplines that creativity happens, and creativity is an essential ingredient for developing the solutions to move toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. SASTA supports Arab scientists in diaspora and within the Arab world. SASTA brings a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and experience, drawing from a civilization that formed the basis of modern science today. We can learn much from each other.

References

Almarri, M.A. et al. The genomic history of the Middle East. Cell 184, 1-14 (2021).

COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. Mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19. Nature (2021).

About the author:

Rana Dajani has a PhD in molecular cell biology from U of Iowa and is currently Cmalakova Fellow at the Jepson school of Leadership at the University of Richmond, Harvard Radcliff fellow, a Fulbrighter, Fulbright Foreign Student Program, Jordan to the United States, 2000; Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program, Jordan to the United States, 2012. Eisenhower fellow, Professor, former center of studies director, Hashemite University, Jordan, Yale and Cambridge visiting professor. World expert on genetics of Circassian and Chechan populations in Jordan. Established stem cell research ethics law in Jordan. Advocate for biological evolution and Islam, speaker at McGill University and MIT. Jordan team leader in studying refugee youth with Yale University and the epigenetics of trauma across generations. Higher education reform expert, member UN women Jordan advisory council. Writer in Science and Nature, Established a women mentor network, received Partnerships for enhanced engagement in research (PEER) award 2014. Organized the first gender summit for the Arab world 2017. Most influential women scientists in Islamic World, 12 among100 most influential Arab women 2015, women in science hall of fame 2015, King Hussein Cancer Institute for cancer and biotechnology award 2009 and 2016 Global Changemaker Award for celebrating 70 years of the Fulbright Programm. President of the Society for the Advancement of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Arab World. women of influence in the Arab World 2021 Arabian Business magazine’s list

Awarded the Jordan star of science by His Majesty King Abdullah II, University of Iowa, College of medicine, distinguished alumni Award 2018, Higher Education Reform Expert EU-TEMPUS, Jordan, founder service learning center, Hashemite University, speaker at TEDxDeadsea and TEDxPSUT, World Islamic Economic Forum 2012 and World Science Forum 2015 and 2017. 

Developed a community-based model “We love reading” Changing mindsets through reading to create changemakers, received Synergos Arab world social innovators 2009, Clinton Global Initiative 2010, Library of Congress best practices 2013, World Innovation Summit in Education Award 2014, King Hussein Medal of Honor 2014, Star Award 2015, IDEO.org best refugee education program 2015, UNESCO International Literacy Prize 2017, World Literacy Council Award 2018 and the Jacobs social entrepreneurship award 2018, Science, Technology and Innovation Award UN 2019, Ashoka Fellow 2019, UNHCR Nansen Refugee awardee 2020.

Author of the book: Five scarves, Doing the impossible: If we can reverse cell fate why can’t we redefine success, Nova Publisher 2018. Reviewed by Nature.

Guest author Amir Teicher discusses how the concept of “genetic load” traces its roots back to eugenic thinking, as described in his recent Perspectives article in GENETICS.

The possibilities opened up by advances in genome sequencing have recently spurred discussions on the burden, or cost, that mutations pose to organisms and populations. Does the relaxation of selection pressure, especially among humans in modern, industrial society, mean deleterious mutations will keep on cropping up and accumulating, ultimately leading to a catastrophic genetic price that later generations would be forced to pay?

Hermann J Muller—the Nobel laureate who discovered in 1927 that radiation causes mutation—thought so. It was he who introduced the term “genetic load”, in a 1950 paper called Our Load of Mutations. Radiation anxiety following World War II seemed to justify Muller’s concern over the accumulation of mutations in human populations. His ideas were eagerly taken up by geneticists during the following three decades. In reality, however, Muller’s concept did not originate solely from his concerns over the hazards of nuclear energy or the overuse of X-rays in medicine, but had much earlier roots in eugenic thinking.

In fact, the term “genetic load” itself was far from novel. In Germany, discussions on erbliche Belastung—literally, hereditary burden, or load—were common from the late nineteenth century onwards, especially among psychiatrists (Muller spoke fluent German and was acquainted with these discussions). In most cases, the term was used to designate the pathological endowment that the mentally ill transfer to their family members. Practically speaking, anyone with a mentally ill relative was considered, to some degree, ‘hereditarily burdened’.

During the 1920s, studies on these alleged hereditary burdens became statistically more sophisticated, absorbing Mendelian concepts and providing robust proof on the heritability of mental diseases and neurological disorders. After the Nazis seized power, talk of the burden that the mentally ill posed was omnipresent and led to the mass sterilization, and later annihilation, of people with mental and physical disabilities. The ambiguity of the term was found useful: it conveyed simultaneously a hereditary burden, a social, and an economic one.

Muller was a vehement anti-Nazi, but he was also a devoted eugenicist. Using the fear of radiation as a pretext, he introduced into population genetics a concept whose roots lay in eugenic thinking, and whose implications were eugenic, too. This fact was recognized by some of his colleagues (and opponents) at the time. Some not only argued against the mathematical implications of the concept, but also advocated changing the terminology itself, which they saw as impregnated with eugenic connotations.

As recent works on genetic load indicate, not only did the term remain in force; some of its own related assumptions are still with us, too. Discussion of genetic load can easily lead to suggestions for top-down management of reproduction, in the name of future generations, wherein those with lesser genetic value would be politely requested to limit their procreation, for the common good. Awareness of the history of this scientific concept therefore might not be a mere curiosity, but an important reminder for the range of meanings that accompany it – indeed, for the kind of load that it, too, carries along.

The recipient of the 2018 Crow Award reveals details of flu evolution at the smallest —and largest—scales.

For many viral diseases, a vaccine can provide lifelong protection. But for flu, you need a new shot every year. The influenza virus evolves so fast it presents a constantly moving target for both our immune systems and public health authorities, fueling epidemics like the particularly bad season we just endured. With over 30,000 people hospitalized in the United States alone this season, the flu provides a dramatic reminder of the importance of understanding evolutionary dynamics.

Katherine Xue, a graduate student at the University of Washington, is revealing the mechanics of influenza evolution on scales ranging from an individual person up to the entire planet. Xue was awarded the 2018 James F. Crow Award for Early Career Researchers for her doctoral work on the subject after a presentation at the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference in May.

In a special session of talks by Crow Award finalists, Xue spoke about using deep sequencing to examine diversity in flu virus populations.

“Up until recently, we were only able to look at the average genetic identity across the millions or billions of flu viruses in a single infection,” says Xue. “We’ve used deep sequencing to show that within a single infection there are fast evolutionary dynamics that have been invisible to previous technologies.”

Xue approaches clinical topics with the conceptual tools developed by evolutionary and population geneticists. Linking ideas across fields is characteristic of Xue, says her mentor Jesse Bloom (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center / University of Washington), whether it’s between medicine and evolutionary theory or between science and the humanities.

“What makes Katherine stand out is her ability to think about big scientific concepts and connect ideas,” says Bloom. “She’ll see and connect ideas in ways that I can’t.”

Viral cooperation

When Xue first rotated in Bloom’s lab, she was working on a molecular virology project about how a particular viral protein binds to a cell. In the course of examining sequence databases, she noticed the mutation she was studying was often ambiguously annotated.

Inspired by this hint of population diversity, she wondered whether the two viral variants might interact with each other. She was able to establish that the mutation tended to occur alongside the wild type version within a population; the mutation was deleterious to virus reproduction on its own but beneficial when mixed with wild-type. This example of cooperation suggests that interactions between different variants within flu populations can be important factors in virus evolution.

A glimpse of evolution in action

But can evolution be detected within the virus population of a single individual? Xue was drawn to the question of how global flu evolution traces back to the founding infections in which each mutation must first arise.

“I was intrigued because it was hard to imagine how this works,” says Xue. “Flu infections are very short; there’s not a lot of time for a new mutation to reach frequencies large enough to ensure it makes it over to the next infected person.” In the language of population geneticists, flu populations are repeatedly subjected to extreme bottlenecks. But observing such rapid evolution in action is extremely challenging.

Xue and her colleagues in the Bloom lab used a unique approach to get around this problem. They partnered with clinicians Michael Boeckh and Steve Pergam at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who had collected samples from four immunocompromised patients over the course of their months-long flu infections. Deep sequencing these samples gave them an in-depth view of a process that would normally be finished within days in a person with healthy immune defenses.

“I initially had doubts that this project would show us anything interesting or be worth doing,” says Bloom. “But Katherine is very independent and persistent, and she kept going despite my occasional words of discouragement.”

The results were dramatic. Over the span of about two months, there was a substantial amount of flu evolution within each patient. Mutations arose regularly, fluctuated in frequency, and even became fixed in the population in a few cases. They also saw evidence that some of these changes are due to selection. The same mutations would often arise independently and then rise to substantial frequencies in multiple patients, suggesting these particular changes were adaptive.

Remarkably, the mutations that arose repeatedly in different patients were sometimes the same mutations that spread through the global flu population within the next decade. The immunocompromised patients seemed to be microcosms of global evolutionary patterns. “We were astonished,” said Xue.

Most of these recurring mutations affect the part of the flu haemagglutinin protein that is most recognized by the host immune system, so the team hypothesizes that the changes help the flu escape host defenses.

These results raise many questions about how evolutionary dynamics interact across scales. How far do the conclusions generalize? Where and when do natural selection and genetic drift act? How do normal week-long infections generate enough diversity to fuel rapid global evolution? Could understanding these processes translate to better flu season predictions? Xue’s graduate research continues to explore flu evolution with these questions in mind.

Connecting ideas

The scientific big picture is never far from Xue’s mind, it seems. Alongside her thesis research, Xue is pursuing a certificate in science and technology studies, with a capstone project on the history of flu research. “I have really loved being part of the history, philosophy, and sociology of science community here,” she says. “It’s given me a lot of perspective that has been really enriching.”

A few years ago Xue helped start the UW Genomics Salon, which is a group of students and postdocs who take part in freeform discussions about the intersections of science and society. These discussions touch on policy, advocacy, communication, education, representation, law, art, and a host of other topics.

Bloom thinks Xue’s broad interests are yet another reflection of her creativity and ability to link ideas across fields. Before graduate school, she spent a few years working as a science writer for the Harvard Magazine. “She’s an exceptionally good science communicator and very dedicated to creating connections between science and other fields. It’s pretty awesome to have someone like that around!”

[youtube https://youtu.be/fTdaAwqdt0k&w=500&rel=0]

Watch #PEQG18 presentations from all the other  outstanding finalists for the Crow Award here.

Attendees of the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference are a creative bunch.  Inspired by one of the PEQG Bingo challenges, they bombarded Twitter with more than 50 #PEQG18 haikus (and one limerick), providing poetic snippets of the meeting to those who couldn’t make it. Joining the 17-syllable summaries were fantastic sketch notes of the meeting by scientist/artist April Wei.

Below are a couple of the haikus, including a few of the non-tweeted bingo entries. Enjoy and feel free to share your own science haikus using #sciku!

Rats in NYC
able to follow their dreams
with selective sweeps

—Markus Stetter on “How brown rats adapted to life in NYC’s concrete jungle“

Strange TE, new home.
Boy frog meets girl frog, hearts jump;
now let’s get hopping.

—Emily Baker on “Hostile genomic takeover by transposable elements in the Strawberry poison frog“

“Bet on sparsity”
vast labyrinth of haystacks
sifting for needles

—Kathie Sun

https://twitter.com/CristyGelling/status/996250105866084353

#PEQG18 #sciku
Sequenced genome, for
my genes. Sorry, I've found more
repeats. Sequenced ge-

— Monika Cechova Mich (@biomonika) May 16, 2018

the neutral theory
does not fit the data well
cherry blossoms fall#sciku #PEQG18

— Matthew Hahn (@3rdreviewer) May 16, 2018

Immortality?
That just means that we'll all die
In bike accidents#PEQG18 #sciku

— Silvan R. Urfer (@SilvanUrfer) May 16, 2018

#sciku #PEQG18
Detect selection, identify sweeps!
CNV mimics the signal,
Laugh in the corner!

— Wenbin Mei (@wbmei) May 16, 2018

Phenotypic plasticity*
Phenotypic plasticity*
Phenotypic plasticity*

*at 25degC, the phrase ‘phenotypic plasticity’ can have between 4-8 syllables. 5&7 most common. #sciku #peqg18

— Thom Nelson (@Genetreeclimber) May 16, 2018

My first attempt at a #sciku :
Grabbing DNA
Genes found in the fish schooling
Their wet past is known

— Martha Burford Reiskind #BLM (@MobReiskind) May 16, 2018

Talks are amazing
People are connecting
I am so delighted!#sciku #PEQG18 @GeneticsGSA

— Dmitri Petrov (@PetrovADmitri) May 16, 2018

connections we found
inspired, inspiring
plane’s brakes not yet fixed #sciku #PEQG18 #tarmacwoes

— tracey depellegrin (@editor_traceyd) May 17, 2018

Get creative for the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference.

Show your creative side, and inspire the population, evolutionary, and quantitative genetics community by entering the #PEQG18 T-shirt design contest! The winning entry will be used on official conference T-shirts available for sale at the Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference, to be held May 13–16, 2018 in Madison, Wisconsin. The winner will receive the conference T-shirt and a one-year GSA membership at the appropriate membership level.

Yes, you are eligible to enter even if you aren’t able to attend #PEQG18 this time. You may submit more than one design. We’re looking for fun and creative ideas, but we don’t have a fixed idea of what the t-shirt should represent. Surprise us!

Eligible designs must:

• • be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. EDT April 20, 2018;
  • be your original artwork;
  • be ‘family-friendly’ – refrain from profanity;
  • include the text “Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference 2018”;
  • use a maximum of three ink colors;
  • be suitable for printing on a dark color, a bright color, or grey (we don’t want the final T-shirt to be white);
  • be submitted as vector artwork at 300 dpi resolution or higher in one of the following file formats: Adobe Illustrator (.ai), Adobe Photoshop (.psd), PDF, JPEG, EPS; vector artwork is greatly preferred;

Submit Design

Questions? E-mail: cgelling@genetics-gsa.org

Worm pop art by James T. Wong. 2007.

In 1997, Ahna Skop approached her graduate advisor, John G. White, about adding a worm-themed art show to the International C. elegans Conference he was organizing that year. “He said I could do whatever I wanted, but not to involve him,” she recalls. That year marked the very first Worm Art Show, which has since become a beloved part of the annual meeting. This year, the worm community will celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary at the 21st International C. elegans Conference at UCLA June 21-25th.  

“Vulva monologues” by David Welchman. 2003.

For Skop, who was raised in a household of artists, uniting art and science came naturally. She first started studying C. elegans as an undergraduate, and remembers being struck by the beauty of microscope images in textbooks, even though she didn’t yet understand the science. The rest of the C. elegans research community responded enthusiastically to her inspired idea. The first show was small, but popular. Skop recalls that first show included a blown glass vase with the C. elegans genome sandblasted on the side and a driftwood mobile depicting the larval developmental stages. Even John White submitted a piece, a wooden reconstruction of the C. elegans vulva.

“Brisk swimmers” by Katherine Walstrom. 2011.

C. elegans art by Ahna Skop and Tri Nguyen. 1997.

These first submissions were pre-existing artistic works, and their creators were excited to finally have a place to share them. “People forget that science is a creative vocation,” Skop says. “Scientists are very creative in how they design their experiments, and it also comes out in their hobbies.” The data itself can also be quite beautiful; brilliantly colorful microscope images have been a staple of the art show since the beginning. Skop notes that microscopy is inherently a visually stimulating endeavor, a perfect example of the connection between science and art.

“On the shoulders of Lord Brenner” by Regina Lai. 2015.

The Worm Art Show has grown in size and popularity over the years, but the entries continue to be as varied as the researchers who attend the annual conference. C. elegans has now been interpreted in every media from embroidery to stained glass. According to Skop, the biggest change over the past 20 years has been the growing number of multimedia entries. Cell phone cameras and

“Life cycle on a thread”, a second place winner by Melissa Kelley. 2015.

YouTube have made audio-visual creation more accessible and popular than ever. The Art Show has also acquired yearly themes–the celebration of Nobel Prize winners, for example, or this year’s “C. elegans for social justice.” But through it all, the Art Show has remained a fun celebration of the worm community. Prize winners are selected by popular vote, and the video entries are screened on the last night of the conference, with the winner decided by who gets the most applause.

A painting by Adam Werts featuring C. elegans. 2007.

Skop, now an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has organized every Worm Art Show for the past 20 years. Though the full show is enjoyed only by conference attendees, she says the created works are a powerful way to reach out to non-scientists. “It’s a testament to what science is all about, and I want the public to actually know that,” she says. “This is an easy way to share the beauty of science and shows that scientists are creative people–not just old white men in lab coats.” As a faculty affiliate in the Arts Institute at UW-Madison, Skop can now train art

“C. elegans and C. briggsae” by Todd Harris. 2008.

students in her lab and has helped install large scientific art pieces in the UW-Madison genetics building celebrating fruit flies, mice, yeast, E. coli, and zebrafish, along with C. elegans. She would love to open a scientific art gallery someday where the innate beauty of science can speak to everyone.

When geneticist Rob Unckless took his son to Lego Club at the local library, he was not expecting to start a new collaboration. The result is the striking piece of science-inspired art that graces the cover of the February issue of GENETICS.

Created by artist Kent Smith, “Attack of the 50 Foot Mosquito” was inspired by a paper by Unckless and his colleagues. The study examines a more subtle threat than a rampaging giant: the potential evolution of resistance to gene drives. Gene drives are a burgeoning new technology that use CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to alter the genomes of an entire population. Cas9 is an enzyme that, when introduced into a cell, makes cuts in DNA that are then repaired through the endogenous homology-directed repair pathway. This repair process can be co-opted to change the final sequence; if a DNA sequence is introduced that carries the desired edit along with some homology to the cut DNA, it can serve as the template for repair. To turn this editing process into a gene drive, Cas9 and the guide RNA are also inserted permanently into the genome, so theoretically every heterozygote will automatically undergo this process. After the first transformation, the gene drive is self-propagating. This technology has been suggested as a way to control populations of disease vectors, like mosquitoes.

Though this technology is exciting and new, selfish genetic elements are definitely not. There are a multitude of natural examples of elements that manipulate their way into more than half of an individual’s offspring. And notably, many of these natural driving elements are associated with genetic suppressors that prevent their selfish activity and restore equal transmission of both alleles. In their paper, Unckless and colleagues discuss potential mechanisms of resistance to gene drive, including new mutations and accidental by-products of the repair process involved in gene drive. They use mathematical modeling to show the probability that resistance spreads through the population is very much dependent on the frequency at which resistant alleles arise in the first place. This study shows much care and study is needed to more effectively use gene drives in the wild.

This stunning cover was born when Unckless had just moved to Lawrence to begin an assistant professor position at the University of Kansas. He took his son to the Lego Club at the library; Kent Smith, a local artist who teaches in the School of Architecture and Design at KU and  specializes in science fiction-inspired artwork, was also there with his son. “I struck up a conversation with Kent,” says Unckless, “We talked about what I do and what he does, and decided it would be fun to collaborate on something.” When the manuscript was accepted by GENETICS, they decided to do a piece to submit as a potential cover.

“I loved being able to provide a fun visual for all of this amazing big brain science!” says Smith. “One of my favorite things about design and illustration is getting to research and learn about new subjects for each piece.” Unckless and Smith discussed what the paper showed about gene drives, and then Smith came up with a way to illustrate the evolution of resistance metaphorically. “Nature’s response to the gene drives comes in the form of a giant monster mosquito rampaging through a city,” he explains. The piece is a reference to the iconic poster for the 1958 science fiction movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Unckless saw rough sketches and gave suggestions about things like mosquito anatomy and the mosquito-borne Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever viruses swirling in the clouds of smoke and destruction. A tiny Andy Clark can also be seen fleeing destruction on his bike.

“I was lucky to have such a rich subject matter,” says Smith. “Collaboration and dialogue with Rob was very inspirational and allowed for some great brainstorming.”

The final product of this meeting between art and science is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the potential perils of gene drive gone awry. Though rampaging giants are unlikely to result, scientists should carefully consider the consequences of this potentially powerful technology.

Unckless, R. L., Clark, A. G., & Messer, P. W. (2017). Evolution of resistance against CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive. GENETICS. 205(2):827-841. DOI: 10.1534/genetics.116.197285

http://www.genetics.org/content/205/2/827

More of Kent Smith’s artwork can be found here:

www.smittytown.com

https://www.facebook.com/KentSmithIllustration/

https://www.instagram.com/smittytownart/

https://society6.com/smittytown

February marks the launch of a crisp new look and improved navigation at the G3 website. Go check it out; we’re very proud of the design! We are also unveiling a new cover layout that allows the art submitted by our authors to shine. This month’s cover celebrates the first published genome assembly of the Canadian beaver.  The study is by an all-Canadian team from The Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), The University of Toronto, The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, The Royal Ontario Museum, and The Toronto Zoo — just in time for Canada’s 150th birthday!

The cover shows the “3 pence Beaver,” Canada’s first postage stamp. Issued in 1851, the stamp did not feature the Queen (customary at the time) but instead honored the beaver, an iconic national symbol and the first animal ever to appear on a stamp. This unusual choice was made in recognition of the beaver trade as the economic engine that drove colonial expansion, leading to the founding of Canada. It also depicts a beaver dam, symbolizing the young country building its new towns, cities, and communities. The stamp was designed by Sir Sandford Fleming, a proponent of the worldwide standard time zone, Canada’s foremost railway engineer of the 19th century, and a distinguished scientist. The photo used for this cover was suggested by the study authors, and provided at the courtesy of an avid collector of early Canadian postal history.

The project to sequence the Canadian beaver was conceived not only as an anniversary present for Canada, but as a test of a new method that could help diagnose genetic diseases. The goal was to assemble complex mammalian genomes directly from uncorrected and moderate-coverage long reads generated by single-molecule sequencing, an approach that could help to identify mutations in clinical samples that would otherwise escape detection. The achievement was extensively covered in the Canadian media (including the Globe and Mail and the CBC). You can read a great interview with study leaders Si Lok and Stephen Scherer here. You can also watch a video interview that includes footage of the beaver sequenced for the study, a 10-year-old resident of the Toronto Zoo named Ward. Happy birthday, Canada!

CITATION

De Novo Genome and Transcriptome Assembly of the Canadian Beaver (Castor canadensis)

Si Lok, Tara A. Paton, Zhuozhi Wang, Gaganjot Kaur, Susan Walker, Ryan K. C. Yuen, Wilson W. L. Sung, Joseph Whitney, Janet A. Buchanan, Brett Trost, Naina Singh, Beverly Apresto, Nan Chen, Matthew Coole, Travis J. Dawson, Karen Ho, Zhizhou Hu, Sanjeev Pullenayegum, Kozue Samler, Arun Shipstone, Fiona Tsoi, Ting Wang, Sergio L. Pereira, Pirooz Rostami, Carol Ann Ryan, Amy Hin Yan Tong, Karen Ng, Yogi Sundaravadanam, Jared T. Simpson, Burton K. Lim, Mark D. Engstrom, Christopher J. Dutton, Kevin C. R. Kerr, Maria Franke, William Rapley, Richard F. Wintle, and Stephen W. Scherer

G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics February 2017 7:755-773; doi:10.1534/g3.116.038208

http://www.g3journal.org/content/7/2/755.full

GSA-Art features the creative works of scientists, particularly geneticists. Read more about the series from GSA President Stan Fields. If you would like to submit your own work or nominate someone else’s, please send an email GenesToGenomes@genetics-gsa.org with “GSA-Art” in the subject line.

Douglas Bishop is a professor in the Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology and the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago.

Summer shadows, Craigville, MA

Long Beach, Craigville, MA