Anne W. Sylvester

Sylvester comes to the MBL from the National Science Foundation (NSF) where, since 2014, she has been the Program Director and Cluster Leader of the Plant Genome Research Program, which supports genome-scale research that addresses challenging questions of biological, societal, and economic importance, and the Developmental Systems Cluster which supports research to understand the mechanisms and evolution of development.

As MBL Director of Research, Sylvester will develop and execute short and long-term strategic research plans that align with the laboratory’s overall institutional vision. Some of her key duties will include facilitating the success of resident and visiting research programs and research support services, identifying relevant funding opportunities, and coordinating collaborative research efforts between MBL scientists and University of Chicago faculty. Sylvester will oversee approximately 150 research staff.

“Anne brings extraordinary experience in academic research, public service, and federal oversight of science to this position,” said MBL Director Nipam Patel. “I am looking forward to working with her to advance MBL research in this important time of growth for the laboratory.”

Sylvester received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in botany and developmental biology from the University of Washington. Prior to the NSF, she worked as an academic scientist, teacher, and administrator at the University of Wyoming and the University of Idaho. She held adjunct professor positions at both Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science and in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Wyoming during her tenure at the NSF.

Sylvester succeeds David Mark Welch, who served as Interim Director of Research since 2017. He will continue to direct the MBL’s Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution and lead his own research program.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Contact: Diana Kenney, Marine Biological Laboratory
dkenney@mbl.edu; 508-685-3525

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- A new Science and Technology Center, which the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced this week, will conduct transformative research, along with education and outreach, to promote a deeper understanding and appreciation of the chemicals and chemical processes that underpin ocean ecosystems.

The Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP), which will be based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), is one of six centers that NSF announced on September 9. NSF has made an initial commitment for five years of support with the possibility of continued support for five additional years.

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, is one of 13 institutional partners in C-CoMP. MBL Fellow A. Murat Eren (Meren) of the University of Chicago is on C-CoMP’s executive committee.

At a time when increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are causing global temperatures to dramatically rise and make the ocean warmer and more acidic, C-CoMP will strive to bring rapid and transformative advances to understanding the behavior of bioreactive molecules and ocean microbes that are involved in one-quarter of the Earth’s annual organic carbon cycle.
 

A. Murat Eren (Meren) collects water samples to study surface ocean microbes. Meren, an MBL Fellow and faculty member at University of Chicago, is a co-principal investigator and an executive committee member for the new NSF Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP). Credit: Evan Barba/@Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

“NSF's Science and Technology Centers in ocean sciences have been beacons of scientific and technological leadership, and they have led to some of our deepest understandings of the critical role of the ocean in sustaining our planet,” said Richard Murray, WHOI’s deputy director and vice president for science and engineering. “This new center, led by WHOI and the University of Georgia, will undoubtedly have a big impact not only at these lead institutions and their partners, but throughout the scientific community, given the breadth of interdisciplinary study encompassing biology, chemistry, modeling, and informatics.”

“The MBL is excited to be part of C-CoMP and to participate in this critical research, which will extend our ongoing commitment to understanding the relationship between microbial communities, carbon cycling, and climate change,” said David Mark Welch, MBL’s Director of Research.

Gaining a better understanding of this carbon flux is important because so much of the carbon derived from photosynthesis on Earth is involved in a rapid cycle in which biologically reactive molecules are released into seawater and converted back into inorganic form by marine bacteria within a matter of hours to days. The central mechanism of this fast cycle is a chemical-microbe network, connecting the production, release, and consumption of dissolved molecules by surface ocean microbes. These chemical currencies can include growth substrates and vitamins that sustain mixed microbial communities that underpin the surface ocean ecosystem. However, the controls on this network, and its links to carbon sequestration in the deep ocean, are not known. Consequently, its sensitivities to changing ocean conditions are also unknown, and responses to future climate scenarios are not predictable.

“If we don’t know the resilience of this chemical-microbe network to a changing climate, we’re missing a pretty fundamental mechanism in the way the planet works,” said Elizabeth Kujawinski, a senior scientist in WHOI’s Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department, and the director of C-CoMP. “The overarching questions are what are the key molecules within this carbon pool, how quickly do they cycle, and what is the pool’s sensitivity to the changing climate. The ocean is already changing, and we don’t have time to wait to understand these fundamental questions.”
 

Preparing surface ocean samples using red light to not wake up microbes in night-time samples. Credit A. Murat Eren

“We can’t actually watch what ocean microbes are doing, because of their extremely small size. Yet, they are literally driving the major carbon and nutrient cycles that keep the planet alive. Better understanding of the network of microbes and chemicals will improve our ability to predict the way the ocean works, now and in the future” said Mary Ann Moran, Regents' Professor in the University of Georgia’s Department of Marine Sciences. Moran is C-CoMP’s co-director and research coordinator.

“An in-depth understanding of the chemical-microbe network has significant implications for our ability to keep a quantitative eye on our changing environments at resolutions that matter,” said co-principal investigator and MBL Fellow A. Murat Eren (Meren). “Yet, such an understanding also demands solutions to significant data analysis and integration challenges. We recognize these challenges and strive to work towards elegant solutions with our science community. With its commitment to open science and open data principles, C-CoMP will aim to foster community engagement and collaboration across disciplines and institutions.”

To tackle critical challenges, C-CoMP will leverage emerging tools and technologies, including advanced chemical tools to isolate and identify molecules produced by marine microbes, emerging molecular biology tools to link physiology to function across groups of microbes, and new informatics tools to leverage existing datasets of marine microbial and environmental parameters.

A major emphasis of the center will be working to expand ocean literacy among students of all ages and to broaden workforce diversity in the ocean sciences.

“I would like the center’s legacy to be a community of scientists and others who can support and advance this important work; a more diverse ocean science community; and a more collaborative approach to these questions that incorporates chemistry, biology, modeling, and other disciplines to better understand fundamental oceanographic mechanisms,” Kujawinski said.

C-CoMP’s participating institutions include WHOI, UGA and MBL as well as the University of Virginia, Columbia University, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, Stanford University, Boston College, Ohio State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and the University of Florida.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

As the Marine Biological Laboratory actively shapes a plan to protect its campus from coastal flooding -- the risk of which is climbing, inevitably, with global temperatures and sea-level rise –it will benefit from a new grant that enables the Woods Hole community to coordinate its resiliency efforts with the Town of Falmouth.

The grant, awarded to MBL’s neighbor, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), is one of 19 coastal resiliency projects the state of Massachusetts recently funded at a total of $4 million.

WHOI’s partners in the funded project are the MBL, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, and the Town of Falmouth.

“This grant funds the next phase of our planning, which is to take a wholistic view of coastal resiliency that ties the issues specific to our campuses with plans for the village of Woods Hole and the town of Falmouth,” says MBL Chief Operating Officer Paul Speer.

“We can’t exist as independent entities in this effort. We are all connected to town infrastructure – roadways, power, water, sewer lines – and we need to think about our neighbors as we try to start putting together long-term resiliency plans for our institutions,” Speer says.

The grant will allow the project partners to hire a contractor (The Woods Hole Group) to engage the local community, schools, businesses, and residents in a dialogue about coastal flooding risks; identify village flood pathways and vulnerabilities; and discuss long-term protective strategies.

A rainbow arcs over Eel Pond after a storm. Credit: Danielle Upton

Thinking Ahead

A few years ago, WHOI, MBL and NOAA commissioned a comprehensive report on their projected vulnerabilities to sea-level rise, storm-surge inundation, and other climate-change related impacts over the next decades. That report, prepared by the Woods Hole Group, was delivered in October 2020.

Its projections -- which align with probabilistic models of sea-level rise used by the state of Massachusetts -- were sobering. Using 2008 data as a baseline, it projected that relative sea level in Woods Hole will rise by 1.27 feet by 2030, by 2.57 feet by 2050, and by nearly 8 feet by 2100. The rise in sea level brings increasingly higher risk both of “sunny day” tidal flooding, as well as storm-surge inundation during rainstorms, nor’easters, and hurricanes.

The report modeled the probability of flooding in Woods Hole with very high level of resolution (down to 5-10 foot parcels), which enabled the institutions to identify what buildings and other infrastructural elements are most at risk of “critical elevation flooding” that would prevent them from functioning.

For MBL, the buildings identified as highest flood risk are clustered around Eel Pond: Lillie Laboratory, the Marine Resources Center, Swope Conference Center, and Candle House.

The report also proposed concepts and designs for the institutions to mitigate their flooding risk.

“Right now, we are in phase 2, which is looking in detail at some of the solutions proposed during phase 1,” says Speer. “We are figuring out what actions we can take in the near term to protect our buildings from flooding, as well as considering long-term solutions and what they may cost.” Speer expects that a set of recommendations on how the MBL should move forward will be available by late 2023.

“At the end of the day, our ultimate plan will have some combination of renovations to Lillie Laboratory and Swope, and engineering controls that give us the ability to prevent the flow of water from getting into particular buildings on campus,” Speer says.

Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2021 before moving up the East Coast, where it caused major flooding in the New York City region before arriving, diminished, in New England. Credit: NASA

Added Protection

Currently, MBL prepares vulnerable buildings for potential storm surge by blocking doorways and entrances with plastic-wrapped boards and sandbags, but this is labor intensive. One possible alternative is erecting modular walls along the Eel Pond seawall and at other potential flood points.

Conceptual planning is underway for a renovation of Lillie Laboratory, where critical mechanical, electrical, and other building systems are in the basement, below the flood level. These building systems are also nearing obsolescence, so they need to be both replaced and moved to higher elevation. “We would also like to renovate the Crane wing of Lillie for our imaging activities. So Lillie has a complex set of interacting issues going on, one of which is the resilience factor,” Speer says.

Some of Swope’s building systems are also in the lower level, and Speer and MBL Facilities Director Marie Russell have started looking at conceptual designs for moving them up.

While Loeb Laboratory is not one of the highest-risk buildings for critical elevation flooding, it has important resources in the basement, including the National Xenopus Resource which can’t be moved, and the MBL IT Department’s Data Center.

“Our goal for the basement of Loeb is to protect it from flooding,” Speer says. “The majority of the building is on higher ground and it would take a truly stupendous flood to reach it, but there’s an area along MBL Street, including a building entrance, where water potentially could get in and flood the lower floor. We need to find a better solution to protect it.”

As work continues to solidify MBL’s resiliency plan, Speer looks forward to beginning the phase 3 process of coordinating with other entities in Woods Hole, which the new state grant will fund.

The Massachusetts Coastal Resilience grants are awarded through the Office of Coastal Zone Management within the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Homepage photo: Seawater splashes into MBL's Waterfront Park in Woods Hole during a storm.

Peter Barbey, Walter Massey, Ronald O’Hanley, Patrice Yarbough begin four-year terms

WOODS HOLE, Mass. – The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Board of Trustees has elected four new members: Peter D. Barbey, Walter E. Massey, Ronald P. O’Hanley, and Patrice O. Yarbough. They began their four-year terms in the summer of 2021.

Peter Barbey
Peter Barbey is former CEO and president of Reading Eagle Company, a media company that owned The Village Voice, the Reading Eagle newspaper, and radio station WEEU-AM. He is an heir to John Barbey, a banker who in 1899 started Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company – now VF Corporation, one of the world's largest apparel firms with brands including Lee, North Face, Vans, and Wrangler. Barbey and his wife guide the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust which provides funds for a range of causes, including human rights, arts and culture, and science and medicine. Barbey is a trustee of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Arizona State University.

Walter E. Massey
Walter Massey is senior advisor to the president of the University of Chicago, chairman of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, and chair of the board of trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago. He is the chancellor and former president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and former chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. Massey is a former president of Morehouse College and former head of the National Science Foundation and Argonne National Laboratory. He has served on the boards of numerous philanthropic organizations and foundations in the civic, social, cultural, and educational spaces. Massey earned his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and a PhD in Physics from Washington University.

Ronald P. O’Hanley
Ronald O’Hanley is chairman and CEO of State Street Corporation. Since 2017, he has served as vice president, president and COO, and president and CEO. O’Hanley was previously president and CEO of State Street Global Advisors. Prior to State Street, he was president of Asset Management & Corporate Services for Fidelity Investments. O’Hanley previously served in numerous leadership roles at Mellon and Bank of New York Mellon and McKinsey & Company, Inc. His philanthropic and civic interests include corporate governance, retirement/healthcare policy and funding, education, and climate. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh School of Management.

Patrice O. Yarbough
Patrice Yarbough is a senior scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center, a contractor to NASA's Human Research Program employed by KBRwyle. She is the principal investigator for research projects in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), an isolation habitat for simulated, long-duration space missions at Johnson Space Center. She received NASA’s 2020 Silver Achievement Medal for her outstanding leadership in the HERA program.  Prior to her work with NASA, Yarbough was director of Strategic Research Collaborations at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and a scientist and research director in the biotechnology industry. Through her leadership in several organizations, Yarbough is dedicated to helping women participate in science, technology, and mathematics at all stages of their careers and is a long-standing member of the Association for Women in Science.  She earned her bachelor’s degree and her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Houston and is alumna of the MBL Physiology course.

Other members of the MBL Board of Trustees include Robert J. Zimmer, Chair; Saul J. Pannell, Vice Chair; Lori A. Berko, Secretary; Nipam H. Patel, MBL Director, David B. Fithian; Margaret J. Fofonoff; James N. Galloway; David A. Greene; Avram Hershko, H. David Hibbitt; William I. Huyett; Constance T. Keller; Christopher G. Kennedy, Ka Yee C. Lee; Ethan A. Lerner; William A. Linton; John W. McCarter, Jr.; Juan de Pablo, John W. Rowe; William T. Speck; Timothy A. Springer; Samme L. Thompson; and Dyann F. Wirth.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Media contact: dkenney@mbl.edu; 508-685-3525

By Jacqueline Garget, University of Cambridge

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Cuttlefish can remember what, where, and when specific events happened - right up to their last few days of life, researchers have found. The results, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, are the first evidence of an animal whose memory of specific events does not deteriorate with age.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, U.K., the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Mass., and the University of Caen, France, conducted memory tests with 24 common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis. Half of them were 10-12 months old - not-quite adult, and the other half were 22-24 months old - equivalent to humans in their 90s.

“Cuttlefish can remember what they ate, where and when, and use this to guide their feeding decisions in the future. What’s surprising is that they don’t lose this ability with age, despite showing other signs of ageing such as loss of muscle function and appetite,” said first author Alexandra Schnell of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, who conducted the experiments at the Marine Biological Laboratory in collaboration with MBL Senior Scientist Roger Hanlon.

Alex Schnell in the Cephalopod Mariculture Facility at the Marine Biological Laboratory, where these experiments were conducted. Photo courtesy of Grass Foundation.

As humans age, they gradually lose the ability to remember experiences that happened at particular times and places – for example, what we had for dinner last Tuesday. This is termed episodic memory, and its decline is thought to be due to deterioration of a part of the brain called the hippocampus.

Cuttlefish do not have a hippocampus, and their brain structure is dramatically different to ours. The vertical lobe of the cuttlefish brain is associated with learning and memory. This does not deteriorate until the last two to three days of the animal’s life, which the researchers say could explain why episodic-like memory is not affected by age in cuttlefish.

To conduct the experiment, the cuttlefish were first trained to approach a specific location in their tank marked with a black and white flag. Then they were trained to learn that two foods they commonly eat – grass shrimp, which they prefer, and king prawn -- were available at specific flag-marked locations and after specific delays. This training was repeated daily for four weeks.

Alex Schnell with a common cuttlefish in the MBL's Marine Resources Center. Photo courtesy of the Grass Foundation.

Then the cuttlefishes’ recall of which food would be available, where, and when was tested. To make sure they hadn’t just learned a pattern, the two feeding locations were unique each day. All the cuttlefish - regardless of age - watched which food first appeared at each flag and used that to work out which feeding spot was best at each subsequent mealtime.

“The old cuttlefish were just as good as the younger ones in the memory task – in fact, many of the older ones did better in the test phase. We speculate that this ability might help cuttlefish in the wild to remember who they mated with, so they don’t go back to the same partner; such behaviors might promote gene spreading throughout the regional population,” said Schnell.

Hanlon added, “We have studied cuttlefish extensively in the field and laboratory for decades, but these sophisticated behaviors are a surprise even to us. There are many discoveries still to come in the link between brain and behavior.”

Male cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) displaying zebra stripe while guarding a female mate. Credit: Roger Hanlon

Cuttlefish have short lifespans – most live until around two years old – making them a good subject to test whether memory declines with age. Since it is impossible to test whether animals are consciously remembering things, the authors used the term ‘episodic-like memory’ to refer to the ability of cuttlefish to remember what, where and when specific things happened.

This research was funded by the Royal Society and the Grass Foundation. Schnell was a Grass Fellow in residence at the Marine Biological Laboratory when the experiments were conducted.

Reference:
Schnell, Alexandra K., Nicola S. Clayton, Roger T. Hanlon, Christelle Jozet-Alves (2021) Episodic-like memory is preserved with age in cuttlefish. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1052

Homepage photo:
A common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Credit: Alexandra Schnell

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.