Series: Convening Science: Discovery at the Marine Biological Laboratory

A concise primer that complicates a convenient truth in biology—the divide between germ and somatic cells—with far-reaching ethical and public policy ramifications. Scientists have long held that we have two kinds of cells—germ and soma. Make a change to germ cells—say using genome editing—and that change will appear in the cells of future generations. Somatic cells are “safe” after such...

What Is Regeneration? by Jane Maienschein and Kate MacCord offers an essential primer on the meaning and limits of regeneration. In punishment for his stealing fire, the Greek gods chained Prometheus to a rock, where every day an eagle plucked out his liver, and every night the liver regenerated. While Prometheus may be a figure of myth, scholars today ask...