water

dock on the harbor When Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (CSHL) started in 1890, biologists were investigating Darwin’s theory of evolution in terms of the evolution of species and the evolution of life on earth. Many labs were built near the sea, allowing some scientists to study marine biology and explore how life emerged from the ocean. Other scientists studied native plant and animal life on land to understand adaptation and diversity.

 

 
"Our blood is very similar to ocean water. It has sodium chloride and magnesium and all those things that are in ocean water. All the cells started as single cells in the ocean, and they were in a solution, which was seawater. In a sense, a lot of the solutions that we make to maintain nerve cells in their happy, alive state are approximating blood, which is approximating seawater. And this all connects us to where we started, in the ocean."

—Roberto Malinow, neuroscientist working in the Jones Lab at CSHL
diver into the harbor

 

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