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Unlocking the Key

May 8, 2014

Biologists Mark Hahn and Diana Franks unload samples from a scintillation counter, which measures radioactivity. The WHOI researchers and their colleagues have been working to solve an evolutionary puzzle in New Bedford Harbor, where Atlantic killifish are thriving despite decades of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The instrument is used to measure how tightly chemicals like PCBs bind to a receptor protein called the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, which may hold the key to how killifish have developed resistance to PCBs. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)