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Cell Biology of Gametes and Embryos: Insights from Marine Invertebrates: Introduction to a Virtual Symposium in The Biological Bulletin

It is a singular honor for many reasons to edit this 2013 virtual symposium for The Biological Bulletin. Not only is this the 116 year of publication of the journal, it is the 125 anniversary of the founding of its publisher parent, the august Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The MBL was founded in the latter half of the 19 century as were many of the distinguished marine biology stations, including the Station Biologique Roscoff (1872), the Stazione Zoologica in Naples (1872), the Kristineberg Station (1877), The Marine Biological Association in Plymouth (1884), the Observatoire Océanologique de Villefranche sur Mer (1885), the Misaki Marine Biological Station (1886), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1890), the Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls sur Mer (1891), and Hopkins Marine Station (1892). These institutions have provided homes for scientists from around the world to study together, often in summer, and to teach the next generation of marine scientists in diverse summer courses of high quality, studying—as the admonition from Louis Agassiz proclaims in the foyer of MBL’s Lillie Laboratory—“nature not books.” A number of anniversary celebrations are already underway this year in Woods Hole, including the 120 for the MBL Embryology course. In addition, 2013 is notable because the MBL has just established a new relationship with the University of Chicago (http://www.mbl.edu/blog/mbluchicago-affiliation/), which should considerably benefit the breadth of its offerings and its financial health. The MBL has had profound effects on generations of scientists and students. In 1970 as a graduate student in molecular biology and biochemistry, I was able to take the MBL summer course in Embryology directed by Malcolm Steinberg. In addition to its stellar faculty and talented students, I was exposed to an incredible range of marine embryos kept at the laboratory, which opened my eyes to what a diverse source of organisms the ocean offered, a resource of which we have barely scratched the surface. I was also stimulated by an elegant guest lecture by Ray Rappaport on mitosis (who taught us in lab how to make micromanipulators with capillary tubes, cover slips, and vacuum grease!) and another by the then-recent Ph.D. Frank Longo on the initiation of the first embryonic cell cycle, with incredible electron microscope images on the fate of the sperm nucleus during the first cycle of sea urchin eggs. These inspired me to devote my postdoctoral studies with Dan Mazia and most of the rest my career to studying the molecular bases of the transformation of the sea urchin sperm nucleus after fertilization. Later Frank and I presented our research in the same session at a fertilization symposium of the Embryology Course in 1987. I offer this personal digression as one of countless examples of the scientific epiphanies, large and small, and recurrent collegiality that so many students and advanced scientists at the MBL have experienced over its long and illustrious history, and also to introduce the topic of this symposium.