Watch Dan Distel’s Darwin Festival Talk!

OGL Awards Two Northeastern Marine Science PhD Students with the 2026 Doctoral Ocean Collections Award

by Emily Stangel | Aug 10, 2026 | News Briefs

Emily Stangel, Collections Assistant and Dan Distel, Director August 10, 2026 PhD candidates Angela Jones and Marcella Heineke, inaugural recipients of the OGL Doctoral Ocean Collections (DOC) Award. With research budgets tightening and environments changing at a...

Meet the Second Fish on Earth with No Red Blood Cells—And It’s Nothing Like the First

by Emily Stangel | May 29, 2026 | News Briefs

Emily Stangel, Collections Assistant and Dan Distel, Director May 29, 2026 Antarctic icefish are known to be the only vertebrates on Earth to have lost functional red blood cells during their evolution ... until now. H. William Detrich, long-term Ocean...

The U.N. High Seas Treaty: Safeguarding Marine Biodiversity

by Emily Stangel | Mar 17, 2026 | News Briefs

Emily Stangel, Collections Assistant and Dan Distel, Director March 17, 2026 Andy Schmid, UN World Oceans Day 2023 photo competition / Andy Schmid The high seas once lacked environmental protections against overfishing, habitat destruction, and unregulated extraction...

OGL joins the Earth BioGenome Project!

by Emily Stangel | Feb 18, 2026 | News Briefs

By Emily Stangel, Collection Assistant Co-op and Dan Distel, Director of OGL We are excited to announce that the Ocean Genome Legacy Center (OGL) has joined the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP)! A global network of more than 60 affiliated organizations and initiatives,...

GLP-1: How a gene from an ugly marine fish changed the way we treat diabetes and obesity

by Julia DiPinto | Nov 18, 2025 | News Briefs

By Julia DiPinto and Dan Distel A specimen of American anglerfish Lophius americanus. (Credit: Mike Beauregard from Nunavut, Canada - pull my finger, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34612997) Sometimes the answers to challenges on land can...

Spooky Scary Skeleton Shrimps!

by Julia DiPinto | Oct 31, 2025 | News Briefs

By Julia DiPinto and Dan Distel Get ready for Halloween by learning about a spooky species that OGL has in our very own biorepository: the skeleton shrimp! These fascinating creatures are also known as “ghost shrimp” because of their ability to hide along...

Energy and Antibiotics from Paper Waste? How Shipworm Bacteria Could be a Solution for Sustainable Energy and Drug Production.

by Julia DiPinto | Sep 24, 2025 | In the lab, News Briefs, Research

By Julia DiPinto and Dan Distel In a new publication, researchers use paper waste to feed Teredinibacter turnerae bacteria strains that in turn produce high-value antibiotics and enzymes, such as Turnercyclamycin and Tartrolon E. (Image credit: Gerton et al. 2025)....

OGL Student Research Yields Better DNA from Frozen Tissue!

by Julia DiPinto | Aug 20, 2025 | In the lab, News Briefs, Research

By Julia DiPinto, Hannah Appiah-Madson, Rosie Poulin, and Dan Distel Scientists generally consider cryopreservation—flash-freezing at extremely low temperatures—the gold standard for preserving DNA in tissues. However, there is an often-overlooked issue: tissues must...

OGL’s New Collaboration Focuses on Sea Star Research and Marine Diversity

by Julia DiPinto | Aug 6, 2025 | In the field, In the lab, News Briefs

By Julia DiPinto and Dan Distel Everyone loves sea stars—but did you know they are keystone predators that help shape and maintain the biodiversity of our coastal ecosystems? That is why Angela Jones, a dedicated PhD candidate, educator, and researcher at the Marine...

New Grant for OGL Accelerates DNA Research at the MSC

by Julia DiPinto | Jun 7, 2025 | In the lab, News Briefs, Research

By Julia DiPinto, Hannah Appiah-Madson, and Dan Distel We all know that researchers use DNA to search for hidden answers in living organisms. To do that, researchers must first ensure that their DNA samples are high quality before use. But how do they do...

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