Treasure Your Exceptions and Submit These to OBM Genetics

Joep Geraedts

Emeritus Professor, Department of Genetics and Cell Biology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, the Netherlands

Received: January 16, 2017 | Accepted: January 17, 2017 | Published: February 10, 2017

OBM Genetics 2017, Volume 1, Issue 1, doi:10.21926/obm.genet.1701001

Recommended citation: Geraedts J. OBM Genetics — Treasure Your Exceptions and Submit These to OBM Genetics. OBM Genetics 2017;1(1):001; doi:10.21926/obm.genet.1701001.

© 2017 by the author. This is an open access article distributed under the conditions of the Creative Commons by Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is correctly cited.

It is an honour and pleasure as editor in chief of the new international peer-reviewed, open-access journal OBM Genetics to launch the first issue. As it covers a broad range of topics we could not have selected a better study than “Mechanisms of origin and clinical effects of multiple small supernumerary marker chromosomes, each derived from a different chromosome” by Hochstenbach and colleagues. This review covers many aspects of all cases from the literature with multiple small supernumerary marker chromosomes. The authors propose that the majority have originated from premature separation of sister chromatids during maternal meiosis, giving rise to trisomies in the zygote. This is a phenomenon which is very frequently found in the zygotes of older women. However, normally these get all lost. In exceptional cases mitotic loss leads to chromosomal mosaicism. Furthermore breakage can occur within or close to the centromeres of the additional chromosomes. Also this is an event occurring only exceptionally.

In 1908, more than a century ago, the famous geneticist William Bateson wrote “If I may throw out a word of counsel to beginners, it is: Treasure your exceptions! When there are none, the work gets so dull that no one cares to carry it further. Keep them always uncovered and in sight. Exceptions are like the rough brickwork of a growing building which tells that there is more to come and shows where the next construction is to be.” Two years later Bateson founded The Journal of Genetics. This is the oldest genetics journal in the English language. It would have been interesting to note the reaction of this remarkable geneticist and first editor in chief on the development of open access journal publishing a review on exceptions as its first article because this way it will keep the exceptions for always uncovered and in sight.

I invite you to submit your exceptions to OBM Genetics, an international Open Access journal published quarterly online. It will accept papers addressing many different aspects of genetics and epigenetics and also ethical, legal and social issues. Furthermore, in 2017 we will publish all accepted manuscripts without fee.