Wondering

Coming into this program, I wondered if I would be able to contribute anything to the McClay lab's work with my extremely limited knowledge, and wondered precisely how many things could (and would) go wrong along the way. I wondered...

Zach Pracher Mentor: Dave McClay, Ph.D. Department of Biology The developmental gene regulatory network (GRN) of the green sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus) has been extensively investigated to illuminate the genetic interactions underlying embryonic development and has led to many insights...

This week everyone in BSURF gave quick presentations to the rest of the program, essentially summarizing our work so far this summer in our respective labs. Specifically, I wanted to highlight Ben Johns' chalk talk about his work on the...

During our interview, Dr. McClay said keeping up with the perpetually-advancing frontier of science was easy because "The game is fun." Now, after three weeks, it's time for me to recount my own opening moves in the game of scientific...

A virtual shoo-in at Penn State thanks to his dad's faculty status, then-young Dave McClay had little certainty about what to study in college. He wandered through five majors and their associated coursework during undergrad, unable to decide what most...

I'm sure the last thing anyone wants to read about right now is more immunology. A lot of people (myself included) have thought something like this at least once in the past few months: "If I hear the word 'antibody'...

Reading biological research papers and hanging at the fringes of the research community, you start to get accustomed to the model organisms used in research (I'm looking at you, D. melanogaster) - the sea urchin, however, was not one I'd...