Martyna Lukoseviciute shares the story behind her octopus embryo image — which has won several international awards — and the unexpected lessons she has learnt from it. Today I would like to share the multi-layered story behind this beautiful image that I captured, on my birthday, at last summer’s wonderful Embryology Course in the Marine
By Kevin Holden The soaring popularity of CRISPR has enabled researchers to expand biological research beyond mice and study different animal models. In fact, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, hosts a 6-week course in developmental biology every summer where students are now applying CRISPR to understand the biology of animals. We chat with Dr. Erin Jarvis, Research
By Jane Marks Zoe Cardon, senior scientist at the MBL Ecosystems Center, has been elected as a member-at-large of the board of the Ecological Society of America, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of scientists. Founded in 1915, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) works to promote, raise public awareness and increase the resources available for ecological
By Ashley Yeager The sea, Rachel Carson once wrote, is the “great mother of life.” Most know Carson for Silent Spring, an environmental manifesto that accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation on pesticides. The book, published in 1962, contributed to the initiation of a federal ban on the use of the synthetic organic compound
By Eryn Brown If you’ve ever brushed your teeth or swished some mouthwash, they’ve been in your sight: the hundreds of billions of microorganisms — mostly bacteria — that live in the average human mouth. Dangling from the hard palate, burrowed in the nooks and crannies of the tongue and intertwined in the plaque on teeth are
By Jane Marks
The Marine Biological Laboratory and Art Lab welcomed renowned artist Jan Dilenschneider with a panel discussion on Oct. 16 to kick off the exhibition “Nature, Divine: Preserving Ecology Through Color,” a collection of oil paintings that focuses on our environment and what we need to do to protect it.
By Erik Olsen Roger Hanlon is one of the world’s foremost experts on one of the planet’s most amazing creatures: the octopus. For decades, he has undertaken expeditions around the globe to study these intelligent creatures. Now, Hanlon and engineer and oceanographer Derya Akkaynak are on the homestretch of an eight-year odyssey to find out
Vanessa Ruta of Rockefeller University, who kick-started her neuroscience career as a student in the MBL Neurobiology course in 2000, is one of 26 MacArthur Fellows recently announced by The MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000 award given to talented individuals with no strings attached. Ruta investigates how stimuli shape the function of neural
By Sung Bin Park
As coordinator of the MBL’s Semester in Environmental Sciences (SES) program, I don’t get many chances to get out of the office, so I jumped at the opportunity to get out into the field with the SES students for some real science.
By Jane Marks
Using the startlet sea anenome and the Mexican salamander, Whitman Scientist Uri Gat collaborates with MBL’s Karen Echeverri to illuminate the regenerative process.