The MBL’s spring and summer educational season has begun! We are excited to see the campus coming alive again, after months of careful planning. On March 21, the season started when 12 University of Chicago undergraduates arrived for their MBL Spring Quarter. This program builds on the success of the inaugural MBL Autumn Quarter – which
Cell division in bacteria is a fundamental and medically important process, but how it works on the molecular level remains enigmatic. Recently, the MBL Physiology course hosted a collaboration that managed to fit an important piece into the puzzle of bacterial cell division. Led by Physiology faculty Ethan Garner of Harvard University, the group’s results
The Ambystoma mexicanum or “Mexican salamander” is a superhero of regeneration and can functionally regenerate multiple body parts without forming scar tissue. In the MBL’s Echeverri Lab, scientists studying these animals hope to decipher how the cells in these animals respond to injury in the spinal cord, limbs, and skin at the cellular and molecular
The sea squirt Ciona is a marine invertebrate closely related to vertebrates. Its simplicity and invariant cell lineage make it a powerful model for the study of development, evolution, and neurobiology. Ciona has provided fundamental insights into the ancestry and evolution of vertebrate systems, including neural crest cells, heart morphogenesis, and expansion of the central
Xenopus tropicalis is used widely as a model organism to study vertebrate biology and the genetic, biochemical, and environmental factors that influence development. The National Xenopus Resource at the MBL is home to more than 4,000 X. tropicalis individuals, including many mutant and transgenic lines. These frogs are used by MBL’s year-round and visiting researchers
Sometimes called a “sand flea,” Parhyale hawaiensis is actually a tiny crustacean that evolved 240 million years ago. It’s considered the most genetically tractable research organism among crustaceans and is studied extensively by the Patel Lab at the MBL. Recent research by MBL scientists revealed that insect wings evolved from a lobe on the legs
For nearly 20 years, researchers have gathered together at the MBL to study the acorn worm. Saccoglossus kowalevskii is a hemichordate and often considered an evolutionary link between the vertebrate and invertebrate lineages. By studying the acorn worm, researchers at the MBL have revealed multiple conserved genetic pathways that regulate vertebrate brain development, illuminating the
Since MBL opened its doors in 1888, scientists and students have been studying the interesting and unique biology of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. During the summer months Mnemiopsis leidyi can be found in Eel Pond, at the NOAA jetty, and in other nearby harbors. Experimental embryologists at MBL have a long history of using Mnemiopsis
Part of a group of single-cell freshwater protozoans and one of the largest unicellular organisms known, Stentor coeruleus can regenerate as multiple whole organisms when broken into small pieces. Stentor has a long research history at MBL – including studies of its impressive regenerative capacity in the 1890s by Nobel Prize winner and long-time MBL
Ecdysozoans are the largest group within the animal kingdom and comprises arthropods (insects, spiders, and crustaceans), as well as nematodes such as roundworms. All organisms in the Ecdysozoan superphylum have an exoskeleton and shed or molt that cuticle layer in order to grow. Unlike the animals in the Deuterostome Division, organisms within Ecdysozoa all develop