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Newswise BETHESDA, MD January 29, 2014 The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce its 2014 Award Recipients. The five individuals honored are recognized by their peers for outstanding achievements and contributions to the genetics community.

The 2014 GSA award winners are impressive scientists who collectively have positively influenced the field of genetics in research, in education, and in fostering the genetics community, said GSA President Vicki Chandler, PhD. These awards provide an annual opportunity for the genetics community to recognize those individuals whose superb achievements have advanced the science of genetics. On behalf of GSA, I thank each of the award winners for a lasting contribution to the field.

The award recipients, who will receive their awards at GSA conferences during 2014, are:

Frederick M. Ausubel, PhD (Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) has been awarded the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics.

Angelika B. Amon, PhD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) has been awarded the Genetics Society of America Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics during the past 15 years.

Hugo J. Bellen, DVM, PhD (Baylor College of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) has been awarded the George W. Beadle Award for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers.

Charles Boone, PhD (University of Toronto) has been awarded the Edward Novitski Prize, which recognizes an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in solving significant problems in genetics research.

Robin Wright, PhD (University of Minnesota) has been awarded the Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education, which recognizes significant and sustained impact in genetics education.

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Genetics Society of America Selects Five Geneticists to Receive Society's 2014 Awards

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

29-Jan-2014

Contact: Adam P. Fagen afagen@genetics-gsa.org 301-634-7300 Genetics Society of America

BETHESDA, MD January 29, 2014 The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce its 2014 Award Recipients. The five individuals honored are recognized by their peers for outstanding achievements and contributions to the genetics community.

"The 2014 GSA award winners are impressive scientists who collectively have positively influenced the field of genetics in research, in education, and in fostering the genetics community," said GSA President Vicki Chandler, PhD. "These awards provide an annual opportunity for the genetics community to recognize those individuals whose superb achievements have advanced the science of genetics. On behalf of GSA, I thank each of the award winners for a lasting contribution to the field."

The award recipients, who will receive their awards at GSA conferences during 2014, are:

Frederick M. Ausubel, PhD (Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) has been awarded the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics.

Angelika B. Amon, PhD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) has been awarded the Genetics Society of America Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics during the past 15 years.

Hugo J. Bellen, DVM, PhD (Baylor College of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) has been awarded the George W. Beadle Award for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers.

Charles Boone, PhD (University of Toronto) has been awarded the Edward Novitski Prize, which recognizes an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in solving significant problems in genetics research.

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Genetics Society of America selects 5 geneticists to receive society's 2014 awards

WASHINGTON Next time you call someone a Neanderthal, better look in a mirror.

Many of the genes that help determine most people's skin and hair are more Neanderthal than not, according to two new studies that look at the DNA fossils hidden in the modern human genome.

About 50,000 years ago, modern day humans migrated out of Africa north to Europe and East Asia and met up with furrow-browed Neanderthals that had been in the colder climates for more than 100,000 years. Some of the two species mated. And then the Neanderthals died off as a species except for what's left inside of us.

Scientists isolated the parts of the non-African modern human genetic blueprint that still contain Neanderthal remnants. Overall, it's barely more than 1 percent, said two studies released Wednesday in the journals Nature and Science.

However, in some places, such as the DNA related to the skin, the genetic instructions are as much as 70 percent Neanderthal and in other places there's virtually nothing from the species that's often portrayed as brutish cavemen.

- University of Washington genome scientist Joshua Akey

The difference between where Neanderthal DNA is plentiful and where it's absent may help scientists understand what in our genome "makes humans human," said University of Washington genome scientist Joshua Akey, lead author of the paper in Science.

Harvard researcher Sriram Sankararaman, the lead author of the Nature study, said the place where Neanderthal DNA seemed to have the most influence in the modern human genome has to do with skin and hair. Akey said those instructions are as much as 70 percent Neanderthal.

"We're more Neanderthal than not in those genes," Akey said.

However, Sankararaman cautions that scientists don't yet know just what the Neanderthal DNA dictates in our skin and hair.

Read more from the original source:
Neanderthal genes are in you

The amorous unions between modern humans and Neanderthals may have led to sons who weren't much good at fathering children themselves, a new study suggests. The findings hint that hybrid boys were partially infertile or perhaps entirely sterile due to the incompatibility of human and Neanderthal DNA. Bolstering those results, a second new study finds that some of the Neanderthal DNA that entered the human genome as a result of interbreeding seems to have made for more feeble offspring.

But both studies also find evidence that Neanderthals bequeathed useful DNA to humans ?? DNA that seems to have helped Homo sapiens adapt to new locales after they left their homeland in Africa. Whether the interbreeding was a net gain or a net loss for humans may never be determined, say the scientists involved.

"It's impossible to come to a simple conclusion like 'It was beneficial' or 'It was deleterious,' or 'It was not helpful,' " says University of Washington evolutionary geneticist Joshua Akey, an author of one of the new papers. "It was all of those things simultaneously. In different parts of our genome, (mixing) was advantageous. In other parts of our genome, it was not a good thing."

When modern humans moved out of Africa into Eurasia some 100,000 years ago, they found Neanderthals there to greet them. The two groups may have made war, but they certainly also made love. Today's Europeans and East Asians owe 1% to 2% of their DNA to Neanderthals, but the impact of those additions has been unclear.

To find out more, rival teams used different methods to conduct the first systematic surveys for Neanderthal genetic material in the DNA of modern humans. Despite their different techniques, both teams found evidence of Neanderthal DNA in genome regions involved with the production of keratin, a protein in skin and hair - a sign that the Neanderthal DNA was likely to have been beneficial. Perhaps the Neanderthal DNA helped make skin and hair more suitable for the Eurasian climate, or more resistant to the local germs. One set of findings was reported in this week's Nature, the other by Akey and a colleague in this week's Science.

Before modern humans arrived in Eurasia, "Neanderthals were living (there) for hundreds of thousands of years, and so they had genetics that were adapted to the environment," says statistical geneticist Sriram Sankararaman of Harvard Medical School, an author of the Nature paper. "Modern humans were moving into these same areas, and the genes they acquired from Neanderthals could have been beneficial." His group also found Neanderthal DNA in areas of the human genome that affect diseases such as type-2 diabetes, but the researchers can't say exactly how the Neanderthal genetic material affects human health today.

Both teams also found evidence that human-Neanderthal mating wasn't always good for the resulting children. Long stretches of DNA in living humans are devoid of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting it was purged from the human genome because of its negative effects. Perhaps offspring with the Neanderthal DNA were less likely to survive adulthood, or perhaps they were less likely to have children of their own. The Nature study indicates that some Neanderthal DNA, when introduced to the modern-human genome, led to male children with lower fertility.

That's a surprising result, says population geneticist Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the new research.

"I honestly thought (Neanderthals and modern humans) could interbreed freely, in the same way that different groups of modern humans can interbreed freely," Slatkin says. "And that is evidently not the case."

Instead the results "seem to confirm that Neanderthals and moderns were basically on separate evolutionary trajectories despite a little hanky-panky along the way," Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, says via e-mail.

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Neanderthal, human mixing had gene benefits, drawbacks