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Fish dish

Summer student Lauren Watka from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth holds a petri dish of fish eggs from mummichogs, Fundulus heteroclitus. Working with post-doctoral fellow Matthew Jenny in WHOI biologist John Stegeman’s laboratory, she assisted with in vitro fertilization of eggs from fish collected from a reference (“clean”) site, and a Superfund site (New Bedford Harbor) contaminated with toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).  Part of Watka’s project was to compare how fish embryos from the two sites developed and expressed genes for proteins called cytochrome P 450s that help detoxify PCBs. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)