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Published online 20 August 2008 | Nature 454, 934-936 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454934a
News Feature
Neuroscience: The great squid hunt
When jumbo Humboldt squid disappeared from Chilean waters, it led to the demise of a world-class electrophysiology laboratory. Now the creatures are back, finds Tony Scully, and so are the scientists.
It was three years ago that electrophysiologist Francisco Bezanilla heard that the squid were back. That summer he had already travelled from the University of California, Los Angeles, to the Woods Hole Marine Laboratory, Massachusetts, in pursuit of the creatures.
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A great nostalgic story, specially for someone, like me, is working so far away from his home country. I have to confess, however, my sentiments are fairly ambiguous: I feel hopeful for the (eventual) renaissance of the Montemar lab, but also I dismay seeing how, instead of a genuine interest in scientific collaborations, many north-hemispherian scientists still think Latin America just as a mere source of rough materials. The story obliquely touch the most important point here: despite the very limited support we have in both, material (money) and social/political areas, some brilliant Southern minds have contributed with elegant, original and relevant findings in a variety of fields. For that reason I want to express my gratitude and admiration to our mentors in Chile and other American countries who trained us with such a passion and intelligence that enabled us to compete side by side with guys educated in high-cost world-class universities. I just hope our colleagues in the rich countries have a more unbiased-prejudged idea of Latin America.
Very interesting story. I always heard about the giant squid axon, mainly related to Hodgking and Huxley work. It was inspiring to have the historical perspective, as well as to know about Chile involvment on this. However, the article makes a very strange mistake when explaining the action potential, specifically when referring to Julius Bernstein work: "The barrier opens, negatively charged potassium ions leak out...". It is sad to see a cation mentioned as a negatively charged ion on such a respected source. For those entering the field it may create significant confusion to understand the mechanisms of the action potential being described further on the text.
Actually, Berstein (and Hermann) did see the overshoot, as shown in a very nice historical article by Harry Grundfest*. Or he saw it before he didn't see it, because it didn't fit with his membrane breakdown hypothesis. *Grundfest H. Arch Ital Biol. 1965;103: 483-90. Julius Bernstein, Ludimar Hermann and the discovery of the overshoot of the axon spike.