We love it when Twitter is as fascinated by embryology as we are! Tessa Montague, a graduate student at Harvard University, captured this video while enrolled in the 2017 MBL Embryology Course. The clip turned out to be wildly popular when she posted it on Twitter. Below, Montague describes catching and imaging the ctenophores. She
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded a grant to MBL Distinguished Scientist Mitchell Sogin to integrate and synthesize the activities of the Deep Life Community, an international team of more than 250 scientists studying the microbes that live deep underground. The Deep Life Community is part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Deep Carbon
By Andrea F. Carter A lesser-known coral found in Cape Cod’s cold waters could offer clues on how the organism can cope with environmental stresses that lead to bleaching. The Cape’s local coral, Astrangia poculata, is a non-reef-building coral that can thrive in very warm waters or cold New England winter waters. Its range spans
This Nature/PBS video features Nipam Patel’s research on the nanoscale wing structures that give the morpho butterfly its brilliant blue. Patel, of University of California, Berkeley, is a faculty member in and former co-director of the MBL Embryology Course.
Each May and September, a tiny, spawning marine worm draws researchers from many institutions to the MBL. Armed with shovels and sieves, the scientists dig the worm up from coastal sediments and fertilize its eggs back in the lab. Over several intense weeks they study the worm’s development and evolution, looking for ancient precursors to
A paradigm-shifting observation in the MBL Physiology course about how cells organize is described in a Nature feature this week. The discovery was made in 2008 by Physiology course faculty Anthony Hyman, teaching assistant Clifford Brangwynne, and other course participants including University of Chicago student David Courson. By Eli Dolgin When David Courson and Lindsay
The ESA honored Cardon for “outstanding research contributions in ecosystem science.”
Watch NBC meteorologist Michael Page interview MBL’s Loretta Roberson about the local corals she studies. By Michael Page Diving into the waters off Woods Hole, Massachusetts reveals a surprise for some – coral. “We got them right here, right in front of the MBL,” associate researcher Loretta Roberson says inside the Marine Biological Laboratory, showing
MBL Whitman Center Scientist Robert Paul Malchow of University of Illinois, at right, describes how glial cells of the nervous system may regulate neuron activity in a study published this week in PLOS One. The research was made possible by ultrasensitive pH probes designed and developed at the MBL. Read more …
By Veronique Greenwood Consider the cocktail umbrella. Like their larger counterparts, these wee things can be furled and unfurled easily. Once you tire of playing with them, you can lock them into the open position with a little latch before continuing to enjoy your drink. Now imagine you have hundreds of cocktail umbrellas under your