• The Society expressed concern that NIH's proposed emeritus award could establish another funding "set-aside" and further excerbate the challange of research support. GSA's comments focused on the need to protect the return on previous investments by facilitating the transfer of useful research stocks and materials to other investigators or enabling others to finish partially completed lines of research.
• GSA provided input to NIH's Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) and its Division of Comparative Medicine on the development of a strategic plan. GSA focused on the importance of the model organism stock centers and other research resources that are supported by ORIP, arguing that stock centers provide a low-cost investment that benefits the entire community, helping promote consistency and the availability of important resources well beyond their original creation.
• GSA also spoke up for model organisms in responding to an RFI about the sustainability of biomedical data repositories. In comments to the Big Data to Knowledge initiative, GSA stressed the critical role of data resources, including model organism databases which are essential for many members of our community. We also emphasized the importance of sustainability for key resources and an open and transparent process for evaluation.

Presumed stem-loop structures in the C. elegans CGL pre-mRNA regulate its splicing. From Mathews et al.

Included in this Issue:

• Society News

• The GSA Journals

• Members in the News

• Education and Professional Development

• Funding, Fellowships, and Awards

• Policy

• And finally...

March Issue March Issue

NEW POSTINGS IN GeneticsCareers.org Research position in Computational Epigenomics and Immunology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA Biology Education Research Postdoc at Nebraska, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE Assistant Director, Neurogenetics, GeneDx, Inc, Gaithersburg, MD Senior Clinical Scientist, Whole Exome Sequencing Program, GeneDx, Inc, Giathersburg, MD Chief, Medical Genetics Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad Medical Corporation, Health Professional Education Programs Manager, ASHG, Bethesda, MD Postdoctoral fellow, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT Chief, Medical Genetics, MillicanSolutions, Inc., Syracuse, NY Spvr CHP Manager, California Prenatal Screening Program, University of California Davis Health System, Sacramento, CA Sr. Clinical Scientist/Assistant Director, Neurogenetics, GeneDx, Gaithersburg, MD Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Scripps Colleges, Claremont, CA Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of California Davis, Davis, CA Faculty Position: Director of Molecular Genomics Lab, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

Mutant Screen Report: Touchy worms
If you gently touch the front half of a Caenorhabditis elegans nematode with an eyebrow hair glued to a toothpick, it will stop and reverse course. Eyelashes will do the trick too, apparently, though it hurts more for the experimenter/hair donor to sacrifice them. In this month's G3, a Mutant Screen Report from Martin Chalfie's lab shows how traditional C. elegans mutageneses can be complemented by neuronally enhanced RNAi screens to identify neuronal phenotypes for essential genes. Chen et al. used the method to screen for pleiotropic genes affecting sensitivity to gentle touch, identifying 61 hits. Read more about the screen at Genes to Genomes.

Members in the News

G3 editor and former GSA Board member Jay Dunlap. Source: Lab website

NPR reports on research from G3 editor and former GSA Board member Jay Dunlap (Dartmouth College) on a type of mushroom that glows green in the dark. This regulated glow attracts insects that then spread the mushroom's spores.

GSA member Razib Khan (UC Davis) is among 20 new online-focused writers brought on as contributors for The New York Times op-ed and Sunday Review sections. Khan is a PhD student who writes about evolution, genetics, religion, politics and philosophy.

GENETICS Associate Editor Jay Shendure (University of Washington) is among those appointed to an NIH working group that is helping to develop the Precision Medicine Initiative research network.

Education and Professional Development

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has an opening for a postdoc in biology education research. The position will focus on the introductory biology course at UNL, transforming both the teaching and assessment practices used in the class. The postdoctoral researcher will be expected to both develop innovative pedagogical practices and collect data on student learning. If you're finishing your PhD and are interested in education research, this may be the opportunity for you! Check out the details at GeneticsCareers.org.

Don't forget that GSA offers several outlets for publication of education-related materials! Whether you have in-depth education research with assessment data or resources you've developed for your classroom, we provide a place to publish your work.

The Faculty Focus blog has highlighted a recent article investigating effective use of student reading questions to discover knowledge gaps in courses: "as instructors, we make a myriad of assumptions about the knowledge students bring to our courses." This article introduces student-generated reading questions (SGRQs) as a means for making inferences about the "range and extent of all students' conceptions," a method that can be used in large lecture courses as well as smaller settings.

The NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education careers blog offers tips on job interviews in "Yawnfest: Don't Be a Boring Interviewee."

Funding, Fellowships, and Awards

To support junior scientists launching their careers, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Simons Foundation have teamed up to establish the Faculty Scholars Program. The five-year, nonrenewable program would provide up to $400,000 in annual direct costs for investigators 4-10 years out of training, which can support partial PI salary, lab personnel, equipment, supplies, and other expenses. The Faculty Scholars competition is open to basic researchers and physician scientists at more than 220 eligible institutions. The application deadline is July 28, 2015.

NIH's National Cancer Institute (NCI) plans to test a new award aimed at staff scientists. The five-year, renewable "research specialist award" would support up to 100% of salaries, but would not cover research expenses. NCI plans to set aside $5 million for 50–60 awards over the next 18 months.

NIH has shared additional data on the age of PIs supported by R01s and other research project grants. Trends continue with increasing support for investigators age 66 and above and a declining percentage for those 35 and below.

Policy

NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has issued the final version of its new strategic plan, which will guide institute activities over the next five years. The plan mirrors many of the themes suggested by GSA in its 2014 White Paper and response to NIGMS's formal request for information, including a focus on investigator-initiated research, the importance of high-quality training, and support for essential research resources.

National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced its new public access plan "Today's Data, Tomorrow's Discoveries." This plan is intended to fulfill the February 22, 2013, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research." The only requirements that will change under the new plan are those associated with public access to research articles. NSF is maintaining the current Data Management Plan (DMP) requirement for grant applications to ensure appropriate data sharing. In the plan, NSF also describes several related efforts it intends to carry out within the next three years. Through consultation with the research community and other Federal agencies, NSF aims to "facilitate the establishment of best practices and standards" for repositories and for data identification and citation. In addition, NSF commits to developing guidance for sensitive data and enhancing their website to support searching for datasets associated with NSF awards.

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) and Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) speak out forcefully on the need to increase our investment in NIH, including a call for a $40 billion budget by 2021.

And finally...

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It takes a killer to kill a killer: a modified version of the polio virus is showing promising results against glioblastoma in Phase I clinical trials; these results were featured on 60 Minutes this past Sunday.

• Iceland as "the world's greatest genetic laboratory": results from the largest-ever genetics study of a single population published last week by deCODE has yielded insights into genetic variation, Alzheimer's, human gene 'knockouts', and evolution. The results suggest that humans are evolving faster than previously thought: our "genetic Adam" likely lived as recently as 250,000 years ago, and likely around the same time as "mitochondrial Eve" (though they probably never met).
• An ode to the fruit fly points out the unique advantages of Drosophila as a model system – and to concerns raised at the recent Drosophila conference organized by GSA about the damage funding cuts pose to fruit fly research.
• Grad students descend on Capitol Hill to stand up for science, arguing for the foundational value of research to the economy and against the flatlining federal budgets that damage scientific progress.
• "Now we have proof that life-threatening flu, an infectious disease, can also be a genetic disease." How a 2-year-old girl's rare genetic variants made her especially vulnerable to influenza.
• The New York Times interviews Harold Varmus on the state of cancer research as he concludes his tenure as director of National Cancer Institute.
• Angelina Jolie opted for extensive surgery to reduce her risk of breast and ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 gene mutations. Four women who also had their ovaries removed speak up about how they made their decisions and what the consequences were.
  

Deadline for next issue: April 9, 2015. Send items (and feedback) to GSA at press@genetics-gsa.org