The National Aplysia Resource (NAR) is a National Institutes of Health-funded facility with the main purpose of providing the California sea hare, Aplysia californica (Aplysia), of various ages and sizes, across the United States and beyond. Rosenstiel scientists are the only ones to figure out how to grow Aplysia, a difficult task due to their complicated lifecycle, but also the various types of algae that they eat. Aplysia are coveted by researchers because of their very simple nervous system – only tens of thousands of cells compared to more than a trillion in ours, and their simple behaviors. Because of this, researchers can identify the individual nerve cells in the Aplysia and connect a particular nerve cell to a particular behavior. This approach won Eric Kandel the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, when he established what happens at the level of the cell when an individual learns or forms a short-term memory using Aplysia. Due to their 1-year lifespan and high tolerance to low oxygen levels (hypoxia) Glassell Family Center of Marine Biomedicine scientists will be using Aplysia to investigate mechanisms interventions associated with aging and complications due to ischemic stroke.
