Microorganisms are the dominant life forms on earth, are found in almost every conceivable environment, and are essential to sustaining life on this planet.

This set of resources was developed and employed numerous times to help students clarify the frequent confusion about cells' chromosome number and ploidy level. It uses simplified stick diagrams to represent chromosomes and circles or oval to represent cells and includes a short, low-tech video tutorial that delivers the information, a worksheet that students can use to practice and test their understanding of the video materials, a set of clicker questions that address the same points as the worksheet, and instructor's notes.

The authors of the research presented in this special collection used the first description of the B73 maize genome to probe some of the most intriguing questions in genetics and plant biology. Read about maize centromeres, new insights into transposon types and distribution, the abundance of very short FLcDNAs encoding predicted peptides, and many other "genetic jewels" contained herein.