News

Genetics at the Big Biology Day

10 October 2019

Members of the Department took part in the Big Biology Day at Hills Road Sixth Form on 05 October 2019. Attendees got to play an interactive game to show what a large number of biologists do daily, identify common Drosophila melanogaster phenotypes. They also played a game where they identified different species of fruit...

Genetics Society Centenary Celebrations

4 July 2019

Centernary celebrations were hosted at the John Innes Conference Centre on Tuesday 25 June 2019. Posters designed for our Saunders Lecture 2018 were displayed during the celebrations (pictured above). The posters were very much appreciated and attendees commented on how much they had learnt through these. The Director of...

Ben Steventon joins the ERC Advisory Board for Wellcome Open Research

27 June 2019

As part of their continued drive towards promoting open access publishing, and the open sharing of research data, the Wellcome trust have launched an online platform called “Wellcome Open Research”. This provides all Wellcome researchers with a place to rapidly publish any results they think are worth sharing. All articles...

Mental Health Awareness Week

14 May 2019

This is Mental Health Awareness week ( https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk for more details) To mark this event in Genetics we have a donation box in the Tea Room with some Mental Health Foundation green ribbon badges which you can wear to raise awareness and show your support for good mental health for all. A Team Logo Quiz...

Professor Alfonso Martinez-Arias awarded ERC Advanced Investigator Grant

28 March 2019

The ERC has awarded one of its prestigious Advanced Investigator grants to Alfonso Martinez Arias ( https://genetics.migrate.drupal.uis.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/martinez-arias ). The project, “the mammalian body plan blueprint, an in vitro approach’ aims to gain insights into the molecular and cellular basis underlying...

Genetics at the Science Festival 2019

20 March 2019

On Saturday 16 March, The Department of Genetics took part in the Cambridge Science Festival. The event consisted of five main activities: 1. The "Fruit Fly Fun" area gave participants the opportunity to observe flies under the microscope and learn about the different varieties 2." Strawberry Station" allowed visitors to...

Joel Alves and Frank Jiggins explore how Darwin’s rabbit helps to explain the fightback against myxomatosis through natural selection

5 March 2019

Nearly seventy years after myxomatosis decimated the rabbit populations of Australia, Britain and France, a new study reveals how the species has evolved genetic resistance to the disease through natural selection. Images and a copy of the paper can be downloaded from DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j7602mx2zd4nebu/...

Head of Department wins Feldberg Prize

9 January 2019

We are delighted to announce that Anne Ferguson-Smith, Head of Department, was awarded the 2019 Feldberg Prize. The purpose of the Feldberg Foundation is the promotion of scientific contact between German and English scientists within the sphere of experimental medical research, in particular in physiology, pharmacology...

New research from the Department of Genetics challenges the prevalence of mammalian epigenetic inheritance across generations - Including new interviews

26 October 2018

Differences in traits between individuals are predominantly genetically conferred. However, evidence from human population studies and experiments in animal models suggests that environmentally induced phenotypic changes might be transmitted across generations via non-genetic mechanisms. This has important implications for...

Department of Genetics researchers use stem cells to build synthetic embryo-like structures - and see Dr David Turner video

5 October 2018

Research published in Nature online this week [1] describes the remarkable organisation of ‘gastruloids’, small aggregates of mouse Pluripotent Stem Cells that, when grown in the lab, develop a spatial and temporal organization of gene expression that mirrors much of what happens in early embryos [2]. The work is the...