This is Why Your Gift Matters
Growing up in rural Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, Gabie Johnson never imagined her fascination with the axolotl, a salamander with amazing regenerative abilities, would lead her to a science career in Bar Harbor. Now a graduate student in the lab of MDI Bio Lab scientist Dr. James Godwin, Johnson is working to develop regenerative therapies that may...
Continue ReadingAxolotl and MDI Bio Lab Featured in Meet the Wild Things Children’s Book Series
Researchers assist writer Hayley Rocco and award-winning illustrator John Rocco.
Continue ReadingMicroscopy Momentum at MDIBL
MDIBL’s facilities and website overflow with the beautiful and sometimes startling images its scientists, staff and students produce in the course of their research with the laboratory’s battery of microscopy and transgenic animal models. One of the experts, Marko Pende, Ph.D., was recognized this month by Nikon’s international “Small World Photomicrography Competition” for making an...
Continue ReadingComparative Biology: Animal Models Strut Their Stuff
Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory use the comparative model approach to understand the basic biology of tissue regeneration and aging. Thanks to evolution and common ancestry, we humans actually share a large portion of our DNA with fish, worms, and salamanders. Humans and zebrafish, for example, share 70% of the same genes; 84% of human genes known to be associated with human disease have a zebrafish equivalent. That’s a lot of similarity.
Continue ReadingWho Is Coming to the Regeneration Party?
New Research by James Godwin, Ph.D., in the Axolotl Offers Insight Into the Role of the Various Players at the Site of an Injury
Continue ReadingMeet Our Postdocs: Marko Pende, Ph.D.
Marko Pende, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher in the Murawala Lab, working with regeneration in axolotls. His specific interest is in how the peripheral nervous system affects regrowing an amputated limb.
Continue ReadingMaking a Mouse More Like an Axolotl: How James Godwin’s Discoveries Are Helping Science ‘Pull the Levers of Regeneration’
When it comes to salamanders, observers of the natural world since the time of the ancient Greeks have wondered, Why can they regenerate their limbs and tails while humans cannot?
Continue ReadingResearch by Iain Drummond, Ph.D., Brings Science Closer to Kidney Replacement Tissue
We all know our kidneys are charged with filtering our blood – an astonishing 52 gallons of it a day. But how does that actually happen? It turns out that it’s not unlike what one might imagine.
Continue ReadingLimb Regeneration: Fitting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together
“I think of the former state of the field as a puzzle in which the pieces have no pictures. Now, with the molecular and genetic tools in place, it can be thought of as a puzzle with pictures on the pieces, which means that the real work of fitting the pieces together can begin.” Prayag...
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