Volume 87 has been printed and mailed to the vol 86 list. The Print copy which is B&W may be downloaded here, complete with covers. Note, the back cover is in color.

Adapted from the foreword for MNL Volume 83, 2009.

The Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter exists for the benefit of the maize community as an informal vehicle for communication. Its inception and continuation has been to foster cooperation among those interested in investigating maize. This cooperation has distinguished our field from others and as a consequence has moved it forward at a pace greater than would have occurred otherwise. Your submissions are encouraged to disseminate knowledge about our field that might otherwise go unrecorded. We encourage the community to carry studies of general scientific interest to the formal literature. However, there is a great need to share technical tips, protocols, mutant descriptions, map information, ideas and other isolated information useful in the lab and field.

Because maize is both a commercial species and a genetic model system, the danger exists that the sharing of research materials might be diminished. It is imperative for us to work together to prevent this from occurring. Certainly, basic findings should be transferred to the industrial sector and basic advances in industry should be shared with the academic community for the benefit of both. Published materials must be shared for research purposes with the only restriction being against commercial use.

We remind the readers that contributions to the Newsletter do not constitute formal publications. Citations to them should be accompanied by permission from the authors if at all possible. Notes can be submitted at any time and are entered into MaizeGDB. We have set an arbitrary cutoff of May 1, 2012 for the next print copy, volume 86. Electronic submission is encouraged and is done by sending your contributions as attachments, or as text of an email, to [email protected]. Submissions must require minimal editing to be accepted.

We encourage the community to carry studies of general scientific interest to the formal literature. However, there is a great need to share technical tips, protocols, mutant descriptions, map information, ideas and other isolated information useful in the lab and field.

To send notes

Send your notes as attachments or as the text of an email addressed to [email protected] (we will acknowledge receipt, and will contact you further if necessary). If email is not feasible, please mail a double-spaced, letter-quality copy of your note, preferably with a disk containing an electronic version to Mary Schaeffer, 203 Curtis Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-7020. Please consult a recent issue for style format. Figures, charts and tables should be compact and "camera"-ready, and supplied in electronic form (jpg or gif) if possible. To separate columns in tables, please tab instead of using spaces, to ensure quality tabulations on the web. Your MNL Notes will go on the Web verbatim promptly, and will be edited and prepared for printing in the annual issue. Submissions must require only minimal editing.

The Newsletter sponsors a new online journal, called the "maize gene review", hosted at www.maizegenereview.org. The inaugural submissions were included in the MNL vol 83, in map order, following the Table of Contents. It is modeled on the 2000 "Mutants of Maize", eds MG Neuffer, EH Coe and S Wessler, Cold Spring Harbor, NY. The emphasis is mutants, but reviews will include any gene with experimentally confirmed function. This journal was first described in a poster presentation at the 2009 Maize Genetic Conference in St. Charles, IL and was an invited presentation at the 3^rd Int. Biocurator Conference, 2009 Berlin, Germany. We welcome contributions from all cooperators on their favorite genes. The text summaries of each mutant, and any new images, will be supplied to MaizeGDB, as was done in 1995 from the "Mutants of Maize", crediting authors and the review page. Each year, new submissions, and any substantial revisions of previous reviews, will be included in the print copy of MNL. Unlike contributions to the Newsletter, these will be peer-reviewed and may be cited without permission of authors. The maize gene review adheres to the stipulations of the "Creative Commons License", with normal copyright retained by authors, but not this Newsletter.