Education
Forging Connections ‘At a Very Human Speed’: Reflections on Art and Science at the MDI Biological Laboratory
In this excerpt from a Tedx talk at Georgia Southern University entitled “Connecting Creatively” Reid Loveless, Georgia Southern student and MDI Biological Laboratory 2016 Summer Fellow reflects on the institution's 2016 Art Meets Science exhibit.
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New Clue from Fish About Healing Spinal Cord Injuries
In this guest post, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, discusses the research of Kenneth D. Poss, Ph.D., a 2016 visiting scientist at the MDI Biological Laboratory, on the regeneration of the spinal cord after injury in zebrafish.
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Dream of Regenerating Human Body Parts Gets a Little Closer
Science is getting closer to achieving the dream of being able to restore damage to vital organs, the spinal cord and limbs. MDI Biological Laboratory scientist James Godwin, Ph.D., discusses this progress in an article originally published in “The Conversation,” a news outlet for the academic and research community based in Australia, where Godwin was formerly a research fellow at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI).
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The Patient Perspective: How Patient Interaction Helps Laboratory Research
The importance of interaction between patients and researchers is the subject this discussion by MDI Biological Laboratory assistant professor, Sandra Rieger, Ph.D., who is studying chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy using the zebrafish as a research model.
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Aging, Just Another Disease
Is aging a natural process that should be accepted as inevitable, or is it pathologic, a disease that should be prevented and treated? Mutaz Musa, a physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, a health-care consultant and an entrepreneur, discusses this question in an article that originally appeared in "The Scientist."
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Cool Videos: Regenerating Nerve Fibers
If you enjoy action movies, you can probably think of a superhero—maybe Wolverine?—who can lose a limb in battle, yet grow it right back and keep on going. But could regenerating a lost limb ever happen in real life? In this guest post, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, discusses the how scientists including Sandra Rieger, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory are striving to understand how other organisms do this.
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Maine Institutions Look to Help Students Become Scientists
What turns a student into a scientist? It’s a combination of inquiry, mentoring, curiosity and a chance to actually try it all out for real. That’s what two educational institutions, Colby College and the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, are providing high school students through programs designed to give students a chance to take an early look at science in depth.
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Seeking the Genetic Instruction Manual for Limb Regeneration and Wound Healing
Extensive regeneration occurs in certain animals such as amphibians and teleosts, allowing them to fully regenerate certain body parts. Despite the fact that humans share many genes with these organisms, our adult regenerative capacity is limited. In this interview, Drs. Ben King and Voot Yin discuss their discovery of a common miRNA-regulated genetic network of genes controlling limb regeneration in regenerative species.
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MDI Biological Laboratory Scientists Awarded Patent for Potential New Heart Disease Drug
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will grant a patent to MDI Biological Laboratory scientists Voot P. Yin, Ph.D., and Kevin Strange, Ph.D., and their collaborator Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D., for use of the small molecule MSI-1436 to stimulate the repair and regeneration of heart tissue.
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