Anti-Cancer Drugs Are Pro-Coral

With average sea surface temperatures increasing around the world, coral bleaching events are growing in extent and severity. More than two thirds of the corals in the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef, have already bleached. While the physiological consequences of coral bleaching are well-studied, we still don’t fully understand how bleaching happens on a cellular level.

Corals living on shallow patch reefs in Palau. The Palau International Coral Reef Center is the staging ground for the research on mechanisms allowing corals to thrive in warming waters.

Steve Palumbi at Stanford University is delving deeper into the mechanisms by which coral bleaching occurs. In 2018, Promega pledged $3 million over three years to the nonprofit Revive & Restore Catalyst Science Fund, to identify and develop advanced techniques for conservation, enhancing biodiversity, and genetic rescue. Palumbi was awarded the first grant from this fund to study the genomic stress trigger that causes corals to bleach in warming oceans.

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Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, A Museum’s Life for Me

Ahoy all you pirate lovers out there! Have you ever wanted to visit a real pirate shipwreck? Well this could be your lucky day! Today, Indiana University, IU researcher and archeologist Charles Beeker and the government of the Dominican Republic are dedicating the wreck of the Quedagh Merchant as a “Living Museum of the Sea”. Now in case you missed all the hoopla three years ago when she was discovered, the Quedagh Merchant is the Armenian merchant ship that was captured in 1698 by the infamous 17th century pirate/privateer Captain William Kidd. It is, in fact, the ship that could be said to have been his undoing. Continue reading “Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, A Museum’s Life for Me”