With New Award, MBL Fellows to Focus Scholarship on Regenerative Biology

Kate MacCord, McDonnell Foundation Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and MBL Fellow Jane Maienschein, who is also University Professor at Arizona State University, have received a renewal award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to study regenerative biology from the perspectives of its history, philosophy, and its science.

Illustration: Regeneration of Hydra. Fig. 47 from Regeneration by Thomas Hunt Morgan (London: Macmillan and Co., 1901).

All complex living systems, from microbiomes to organisms to ecosystems, have some capacity to regenerate or repair themselves in the face of disturbance or damage. However, great differences exist. Some organisms can regenerate reproductive cells and spinal neurons, for example, while humans cannot. Do we mean the same thing by regeneration at every level of biological organization? How does understanding at one level inform understanding at the others? Is there an underlying logic of regeneration across all living systems? MacCord will lead this initiative and also co-lead a working group on germline regeneration with MBL Hibbit Fellow Duygu Özpolat.

This renewed funding supports the working groups’ research, which will include workshops, meetings, experiments, and other activities. The outcomes will be peer-reviewed articles, essays, white papers, workshops/conferences, and a co-edited volume for the University of Chicago Press.