Congratulations to MBL Whitman Scientist Karen Crawford, whose image of mosaic squid hatchlings was selected as one of Nature’s “best science images of 2020.” Crawford, MBL Senior Scientist Joshua Rosenthal, and team accomplished the first successful gene knockout in a cephalopod this year. Text by Nisha Gaind, images selected by Nature’s visuals team 2020 has been
By Eve Zuckoff How did insects get their wings? After 100 years of debate, that is the mystery just solved by biologists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. Until now, many scientists believed that insect wings were ”novel” structures that sprang up with no corresponding structure in the ancestor. But postdoctoral researcher Heather
by David Westenberg Each summer, the Microbial Diversity course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA is the place for exploring the incredible beauty and diversity of the microbial world. The 6 ½ week course brings together a group of strangers for the purpose of learning to cultivate and isolate microbes. The beauty
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
An update on research from Andrew Gillis, a Marine Biological Laboratory Whitman Center Scientist from the University of Cambridge, U.K. and an incoming MBL scientist. By Lewis Robertson A Centuries old theory on the evolution of fins has now gained support by UK scientists. The theory first appeared in the late 1800s, suggested that paired
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.
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
The authors of this Science magazine tribute to Joe L. Martinez, Jr., who co-founded the MBL Summer Program in Neuroscience, Excellence and Success (SPINES), are also associated with the MBL. Keith Trujillo has served as SPINES co-director, faculty member and advisory board member; Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa was a faculty member; and Kenira Thompson is a course