Marine Biological Laboratory

It's #MicroscopyMonday, so let's take a peek into the 🔬 (and into the 👂). These red blood cells inside the cochlea arteriole were imaged at the MBL during the Biology of the Inner Ear Advanced Research Training Course. This was done using 90 nm slice selections and transmission electron microscopy. Credit: Ana I. López-Porras, University of Kentucky

Learn how the scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole are studying novel research organisms to help unlock fundamental secrets of biology to understand the world and ourselves. Video produced by Jessica Rotondo. Footage: BioQuest Studios / MBL

More than 30 undergraduate researchers capped off their hard work this summer at a poster session on August 15.

MBL’s Javier Lloret is collaborating with the island’s Great Pond Foundation on an ambitious project linking scientific research and conservation management.

In the MBL Physiology course, faculty member Manu Prakash opened a window on the huge distances marine microbes travel with an ingenious app for light microscopes invented by his lab.

Few animals are as endearingly weird as tardigrades. Tardigrades are famously resilient, able to survive conditions of extreme temperature, radiation, desiccation, or pressure by shrinking, suspending their metabolism, and entering a death-like state called tun. They can even weather the extremely harsh conditions of outer space. Students in the 2023 MBL Embryology course got a chance to work with tarditrades brought to Woods Hole by Bob Goldstein of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, whose lab is developing tardigrades as a research organism. Goldstein also brought fluorescent dyes for the students to experiment with imaging of live tardigrades, which are typically imaged in a nonliving, chemically fixed state. Their explorations have led to a new procedure for live-cell imaging of tardigrades, recently published in STAR Protocols by the Goldstein lab together with nine students and two teaching assistants from the Embryology course.

It's #microscopymonday, so let's take a peek into the 🔬! This high resolution image of a cleared mouse embryo was taken during the 2022 Embryology course at the MBL. Credit: Abhishek Kumar and Ivan Candido-Ferreira

Pigmentation is a well-understood means of coloration in nature, but some colors, especially blue and green, in many animals is created instead by nanostructures that work in the same way as a soap bubble to create color. A great example comes from the scales of butterflies. Studies on butterfly structural coloration have produced a wealth of data describing the nanostructures and physics involved in their coloration, but little is known about how butterflies actually build these nanostructures during development. Scientists in the Nipam Patel Lab are interested in understanding how butterflies erect these nanostructures while the sales are developing within the chrysalis. Photo: Blue Morpho Butterfly. Credit: Nipam Patel

Scientists at the MBL and around the world study sea to learn more about embryonic development, reproduction, and regeneration. Scientists at the MBL study sexual reproduction and development in sea stars and its other echinoderm relatives as a window into understanding human health and fertility. Credit: Tom Kleindinst

Since 2003, marine ecologist David Johnson has spent time doing field work in the Plum Island Ecosystem, a long-term ecological research station (LTER) MBL Ecosystems Center. This video from Science News Magazine highlights Johnson's work documenting fiddler crabs pushing northward into Great Marsh. Anne Giblin, Director of the Ecosystems Center, is also featured.