Extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) has been identified in a broad range of eukaryotes and have been shown to carry genes and regulatory sequences. Additionally, they can amplify within a cell by autonomous replication or reintegration into the genome, effectively influencing copy number in cells. This has significant implications for cancer, where oncogenes are frequently amplified on eccDNA. However, little is known about the exact molecular mechanisms governing eccDNA functionality. To this end, we constructed a fluorescent reporter at an eccDNA-prone locus of the yeast genome, CUP1. It is our hope that this reporter will contribute to a better understanding of eccDNA formation and amplification within a cell.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin worked with X-ray crystallography at King's College London, UK, and she helped determine the helical structure of DNA in the early 1950s. Franklin's research helped establish molecular genetics, a field that investigates how heredity works on the molecular level. The discovery of the structure of DNA also made future research possible into the molecular basis of embryonic development, genetic disorders, and gene manipulation.

The General Embryological Information Service (GEIS) was an annual report published by the Hubrecht Laboratory in Utrecht, The Netherlands from 1949 to 1981 that disseminated contemporary research information to developmental biologists. The purpose of the annual report was to catalog the names, addresses, and associated research of every developmental biologist in the world. Pieter Nieuwkoop edited each issue from 1949 until 1964, when Job Faber began assisting Nieuwkoop. Bert Z. Salome joined the editing team in 1968 before Nieuwkoop ceased editing duties in 1971. Faber and Salome remained the editors from 1971 until the periodical's final year of circulation in 1981. The Hubrecht Laboratory, a national laboratory created to house a large collection of comparative embryological materials and loan them to interested researchers, sponsored the publication after World War II to facilitate international collaboration and prevent unnecessary duplication of work. The catalog of researchers and the scientific topics grew in number and variety as the field of developmental biology changed during the publication's thirty-two year history.

Golden Rice was engineered from normal rice by Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer in the 1990s to help improve human health. Golden Rice has an engineered multi-gene biochemical pathway in its genome. This pathway produces beta-carotene, a molecule that becomes vitamin A when metabolized by humans. Ingo Potrykus worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and Peter Beyer worked at University of Freiburg, in Freiburg, Germany. The US Rockefeller Foundation supported their collaboration. The scientists and their collaborators first succeeded in expressing beta-carotene in rice in 1999, and they published the results in 2000. Since then, scientists have improved Golden Rice through laboratory and field trials, but as of 2013 no countries have grown it commercially. Golden Rice is a technology that intersects scientific and ethical debates that extend beyond a grain of rice.