William Frank Gilly is an American biologist specializing in the study of cephalopods. He works at Gilly Lab, Hopkins Marine Station, in Monterey County, as a professor of biology, at Stanford University [1] and was involved with the television special The Future is Wild .
Gilly received a BSE (Electrical Engineering, 1972) from Princeton University and a Ph.D. (Physiology and Biophysics, 1978) from Washington University in St. Louis. He had additional training at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.
From the late 1970s to the 2010s, he contributed to the basic understanding of electrical excitability in nerve and muscle cells in a wide range of organisms ranging from brittle-stars to mammals. Much of this work employed the giant axon system of the squid as an experimental model system for molecular and biophysical approaches. Additional physiological studies made in the living squid revealed unexpected complexities in how the giant axon system controls escape responses, and how mechanisms governing that control are subject to modification by environmental factors like temperature and during normal development.
Gilly's current research program on squid concentrates on the behavior and physiology of Dosidicus gigas, the jumbo or Humboldt squid. Fieldwork in the Gulf of California [2] [3] near Santa Rosalía, Baja California Sur [4] and off Monterey Bay employs a variety of tagging methodologies in order to track short-term diel vertical migrations as well as long-distance migrations.
Gilly was nominated by Stanford University to be one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Speakers who spoke about his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010. [5] He is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.
Gilly is an avid fan of John Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, Robinson Jeffers and other notable characters in the Monterey peninsula. [6]
An axon or nerve fiber is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, in vertebrates, that typically conducts electrical impulses known as action potentials away from the nerve cell body. The function of the axon is to transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands. In certain sensory neurons, such as those for touch and warmth, the axons are called afferent nerve fibers and the electrical impulse travels along these from the periphery to the cell body and from the cell body to the spinal cord along another branch of the same axon. Axon dysfunction can be the cause of many inherited and acquired neurological disorders that affect both the peripheral and central neurons. Nerve fibers are classed into three types – group A nerve fibers, group B nerve fibers, and group C nerve fibers. Groups A and B are myelinated, and group C are unmyelinated. These groups include both sensory fibers and motor fibers. Another classification groups only the sensory fibers as Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV.
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin was an English physiologist and biophysicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent for most of its history, but became officially affiliated with the University of Chicago on July 1, 2013. It also collaborates with numerous other institutions.
Ommastrephidae is a family of squid containing three subfamilies, 11 genera, and over 20 species. They are widely distributed globally and are extensively fished for food. One species, Todarodes pacificus, comprised around half of the world's cephalopod catch annually.
Lanternfish are small mesopelagic fish of the large family Myctophidae. One of two families in the order Myctophiformes, the Myctophidae are represented by 246 species in 33 genera, and are found in oceans worldwide. Lanternfishes are aptly named after their conspicuous use of bioluminescence. Their sister family, the Neoscopelidae, are much fewer in number but superficially very similar; at least one neoscopelid shares the common name "lanternfish": the large-scaled lantern fish, Neoscopelus macrolepidotus.
The Humboldt squid, also known as jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid (EN), and Pota in Peru or Jibia in Chile (ES), is a large, predatory squid living in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is the only known species of the genus Dosidicus of the subfamily Ommastrephinae, family Ommastrephidae.
The giant sea bass is a fish native to the North Pacific Ocean. Although commonly referred to as a giant sea bass, black sea bass or giant black sea bass, it is actually a wreckfish in the family Polyprionidae rather than in the sea bass family Serranidae.
The longfin inshore squid is a species of squid of the family Loliginidae.
Hopkins Marine Station is the marine laboratory of Stanford University. It is located ninety miles south of the university's main campus, in Pacific Grove, California on the Monterey Peninsula, adjacent to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It is home to ten research laboratories and a fluctuating population of graduate and undergraduate students. It has also been used for archaeological exploration, including of the Chinese-American fishing village that existed on the site before burning down in 1906.
Kenneth Stewart Cole was an American biophysicist described by his peers as "a pioneer in the application of physical science to biology". Cole was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1967.
The squid giant synapse is a chemical synapse found in squid. It is the largest known chemical junction in nature.
Richard Winyu Tsien, is a Chinese-born American electrical engineer and neurobiologist. He is the Druckenmiller Professor of Neuroscience, Chair of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, and Director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute at New York University Medical Center, and also an emeritus faculty member of Stanford University School of Medicine.
John Peter Wikswo, Jr. is a biological physicist at Vanderbilt University. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States.
Barbara Block is an American marine biologist and Charles & Elizabeth Prothro Professor of Biology in Marine Sciences at the Stanford University Hopkins Marine Station and a co-director of Stanford University's Tuna Research and Conservation Center, with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She has published numerous bodies of work throughout her career in marine biology and chemistry, mainly focusing on the biology and chemistry of metabolism in different tuna and shark species. Additionally, she has helped develop two new types of electronic tags for large pelagic predators in order to track the migrations of large oceanic predator species.
All extant cephalopods have a two-part beak, or rostrum, situated in the buccal mass and surrounded by the muscular head appendages. The dorsal (upper) mandible fits into the ventral (lower) mandible and together they function in a scissor-like fashion. The beak may also be referred to as the mandibles or jaws. These beaks are different from bird beaks because they crush bone while most bird beaks do not.
Ronald David Vale ForMemRS is an American biochemist and cell biologist. He is a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco. His research is focused on motor proteins, particularly kinesin and dynein. He was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award for Biomedical Research in 2019, the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in 2017 together with Ian Gibbons, and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2012 alongside Michael Sheetz and James Spudich. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was the president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 2012. He has also been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1995. In 2019, Vale was named executive director of the Janelia Research Campus and a vice president of HHMI; his appointment began in early 2020.
Stephen R. Palumbi is the Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor in Marine Sciences at Stanford University at Hopkins Marine Station. He also holds a Senior Fellowship at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The purpleback flying squid or purpleback squid is a species of cephalopod in the family Ommastrephidae, occurring in the Indo-Pacific. It is considered one of the most abundant large squids.
Brian M. Salzberg is an American neuroscientist, biophysicist and professor. He is Professor of Neuroscience and of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
William Archer Hagins was an American medical researcher. He was chief of the Section of Membrane Biophysics in National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases's Laboratory of Chemical Physics upon his retirement in 2007. Hagins and colleagues made the seminal discovery of the dark current in photoreceptor cells. This finding became central to understanding how the visual cells worked and led to knowledge of the importance of reattaching a detached retina as soon as possible for continued use. As a fellow of Fulbright Program, he'd also served in the United States Navy as a Research Medical Officer. He joined NIDDK's Laboratory of Physical Biology in 1958, doing independent research in the Section of Photobiology, headed by Frederick Sumner Brackett. Hagins was a mentor to many, particularly through his work with the Brackett Foundation.