In the Molecular Discovery Lab at BIOS, a deli-style fridge with sliding glass doors houses vials and bottles of chemicals used to track proteins, stain cells, and analyze DNA – as well as a small bunch of lettuce in the corner.  It’s been picked fresh from the garden to satiate the appetites of the lab’s current visitors.

It is often said that good things come in groups of three, and that might be the case for a trio of research projects aimed at reducing a recent, but growing, threat to Bermuda’s marine biodiversity: the invasive lionfish.

A team of scientists from Yale University traveled to BIOS in May to study the Portuguese man o’ war, a frequent visitor to the waters around Bermuda during spring and early summer.

Since arriving at BIOS in July 2019, scientist Julius Barsi’s first priority has been designing a facility dedicated to a unique type of molecular biology to be built at BIOS within an existing laboratory space. The transgenic facility, which will be located in the Naess Building on campus, will leverage marine organisms to discover specifically how genes are controlled.

Julius Christopher Barsi grew up in a family of academics, engineers, and artists, including grandparents who owned an estate farm in Kona, Hawaii. Being surrounded by such natural wild beauty, he knew from an early age that he wanted to become a biologist. By his teenage years he was fascinated by a diverse array of topics, including nuclear physics and genetics. Realizing the importance that the discovery of the double helix (the twisted-ladder structure of a DNA molecule) held for the field of life sciences, he decided to dedicate his academic career to the pursuit of knowledge in this area.