By Jill Sjong This week we review the hit movie “My Octopus Teacher,” the story about a man who goes diving in a kelp forest off the Western Cape of South Africa, and becomes acquainted with an octopus. We review the movie with Roger Hanlon, a diving biologist, cephalopod expert and senior scientist at
By Diana Kenney William S. Reznikoff, senior research scholar at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS members bestow the honor of “Fellow” upon their peers in recognition of “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts
An update on the reverberations of a paradigm-shifting paper in cell biology that began in the MBL Physiology course. By Alla Katsnelson The fluid inside a living cell bustles with activity. Proteins, RNA, lipids and other molecules wiggle, zip, glide and drift through this broth — catalyzing reactions, activating receptors, relaying messages, marking viruses and
Medical treatment and microbial ecology meet in the collaboration between UChicago’s Eugene Chang and MBL’s Mitch Sogin, as this article in Medicine on the Midway describes. At right, Sogin, who founded the MBL’s Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, walks through Little Sippewissett Marsh, Falmouth, a well-studied field site for MBL microbiologists.
In this delightful podcast, MBL Fellow Hari Shroff delves into memories (fond and not so much) of his childhood in England; his lifelong interest in tool building, “by luck” taking a post-doc in the lab of Eric Betzig and helping to develop a microscopy technology that went on to win a Nobel Prize; the uncertainties
Scientists explain how genetically engineered organisms can help diminish atmospheric carbon and tackle climate change. Co-authors of the opinion piece, published in BioDesign Research, include MBL Distinguished Scientist Jerry Melillo. From NANJING AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE Climate change is a major global crisis. Despite international agreements to fight climate change, greenhouse gas emissions
By Ozren Bogdanovic and Manuel Irimia On 16 September 2020, when the news of José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta’s untimely passing broke, the scientific community was left in dismay. … The field of developmental and evolutionary genomics had just lost a foundational figure, a mentor and one of its most prolific scientists. Read more .. Source: José
Paloma Gonzalez Bellido, an MBL Whitman Center Scientist and collaborator with Senior Scientist Roger Hanlon, comments on this study. By Katherine J. Wu Octopuses can taste what their arms touch, and scientists have figured out how. Should anything ever compel you to lick an octopus’s arm, keep this in mind: That arm has all the
Mentoring people from underrepresented groups in science is part of the DNA of the MBL’s Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics and Success (SPINES). So it is most fitting that the course’s co-director from 2017-2019, Carmen S. Maldonado-Vlaar of the University of Puerto-Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, has been honored for her mentorship of women in neuroscience.
A glowing bat and a curled chameleon, both imaged by MBL Embryology Course students, are among the top 20 winners of the 2020 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, a leading forum for showcasing life as seen through a light microscope. The chameleon, which placed 8th, was taken by 2019 Embryology course students Allan Carrillo-Baltodano and