By Nicholas Gerbis Prior to the pandemic, the public mind largely equated genomic medicine with editing DNA — the cell’s architectural reference library. But patrons of reference libraries don’t check out originals; they make copies. In cells, scientists call those copies messenger RNA, or mRNA. “It’s the intermediary that takes instructions encoded in your DNA
By Dan Drollette Jr. “You’re making a fish without eyeballs? What are you doing—creating some sort of Franken-fish?” That was the first response I got—which happened to come from an investigative reporter at USA Today—upon delivering the news that I was a biomedical fellow at the Logan Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory
Squid’s giant nerve fibers have been essential to research for decades. Now breakthroughs in editing squid genomes could lead to a more complete understanding of nervous systems in general. By James Dinneen “We’ve got tuuuuuubes!” fisherman Matt Rissell shouts as he leans over the gunwale of the Skipjack to check his line. After a salty
MBL scientist Loretta Roberson appears (0:35) in this broadcast news segment about seaweed (macroalgae) aquaculture on Univision, the nation’s largest provider of Spanish-language content. Roberson is the principal investigator for “Techniques for Tropical Seaweed Cultivation,” a large-scale project to establish seaweed farms in U.S. waters, including off of Florida, Puerto Rico and Belize. Watch the
MBL Whitman Center Scientist Kirsten Sadler Edepli’s recent publication in Nature Communications is highlighted in this article. By Daniel Bardsley The liver is so remarkable among the body’s organs that even the Ancient Greeks wrote about it. They incorporated it into the story of Prometheus, who – chained to a rock as punishment for stealing
MBL is a pinnacle of cuttlefish research and expertise as indicated by this article, which quotes MBL scientists Roger Hanlon and Bret Grasse, Whitman scientist Trevor Wardill, and 2018 Grass Fellows Alex Schnell and Tessa Montague. By Veronique Greenwood Captive cuttlefish require entertainment when they eat. Dinner and a show — if they can’t get
For each COVID-19 vaccine shot in the arm, we have the horseshoe crab—and the collaboration between a Johns Hopkins immunologist and hematologist—to thank. By Jim Duff Fear at first sight: That was Jack Levin’s reaction upon meeting the creature that put him on the path to lasting scientific achievement. The year was 1963, two years
By Evan Lubofsky As a child, Johns Hopkins Assistant Professor Sarah Preheim would spend her summers swimming and boating at her family’s vacation home on Queen Lake in central Massachusetts. “The water back then was nearly pristine,” she says, “so there was no place I would rather be than in the water on a hot
In a new magazine based on Martha’s Vineyard, MBL Ecosystems Center Director Anne Giblin explains the negative impacts of excess nitrogen in coastal environments. By Leslie Garrett There was a time when this Canadian was forced by her high school chemistry teacher to memorize the entire periodic table of elements. Nitrogen was easy. It came
By Anil Oza In a small tent in the middle of Panama’s rainforest, Aaron Pomerantz assembled a makeshift field lab, filled with microscopes, chemical reagents, and delicate lab equipment. At times, it was so hot that Pomerantz, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, struggled to keep his own sweat from contaminating his