Legends for Header Photos

These are the Organ Mountains located northeast of Las Cruces, NM.  Last year I gave a research seminar at the Department of Biological Sciences at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

This is the Olson farmhouse near Rockland, ME made famous by Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting “Christina’s World”.  I have spent 17 summers in Maine doing research with Dickinson students at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

This is a sunset captured from the lab dock at the MDI Bio Lab in Salisbury Cove, ME.

This is Monument Cove in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, ME.

This is a transmission electron micrograph of a metal replica of sea urchin coelomocytes that have had their membranes extracted by detergent revealing their extensive cellular cytoskeleton – largely composed of actin filaments.  The structure and dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton in these cells is one of my major research interests.

A line of sycamore trees framing a road off of MD Rt 213 near Washington College in Chestertown, MD.

A scanning electron micrograph of an HL-60 human leukemia cell that has been induced to become macrophage-like in culture.  My students and I have worked with Prof. Mike Roberts’ research team in studying the changes in the HL-60 cells that accompany this transformation.

Fluorescence microscopy image of cultured skate liver cells (hepatocytes) labeled for actin in red, intermediate filaments in yellow and DNA in blue.  I have collaborated with scientists at the MDI Bio Lab, Yale, and Rochester in the characterization of the structure and function of these cultured skate hepatocyte clusters.

Left = dividing first division sea urchin embryo. Middle = first division sea urchin embryo labeled for microtubules of the mitotic apparatus in green, myosin of the contractile ring in red and DNA in blue. Right = sea urchin pluteus larvae 72 hours post fertilization labeled for actin in red and DNA in blue.

Left = living sea urchin coelomocyte visualized with digitally-enhanced phase contrast microscopy.  Middle = sea urchin coelomocyte stained for actin in red, the Arp2/3 complex in green and DNA in blue.  Right = First division sea urchin embryo labeled for microtubules in green and DNA in blue.