Rather than being centralized in one part of its body, the jellyfish brain, which is composed of approximately 10,000 neurons, is diffused across the animal’s entire body like a net. Jellyfish are perhaps a counterintuitive animal with which to study neuroscience, because the animals do not actually have a brain as we know it.

Over the past four years, he and postdoctoral scholar Brady Weissbourd have worked to develop a toolbox of genetic methods they use to tinker with the brain cells of the microscopic jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica in order to study the neuroscience of behavior. The felt jellyfish marks the entrance to the laboratory of Anderson, a neuroscientist and the director of Caltech’s Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience. “Which is why it’s exciting that we now have three labs at Caltech working on them.” Reading minds “There aren’t a lot of labs in the country that have jellyfish,” notes Dabiri, an aeronautical and mechanical engineer. In the process, the translucent creatures have opened new windows into our understanding of neuroscience, the deep ocean, and biological regeneration. Over the past decade, Caltech researchers David Anderson, John Dabiri (MS ’03, PhD ’05), and Lea Goentoro have begun to tap into the powerful abilities of these primitive animals to answer questions about our changing planet and the common properties underlying life itself. Older than the dinosaurs, older even than the rings encircling Saturn, jellyfish have been swimming Earth’s oceans for 550 million years, surviving drastic environmental changes relatively unscathed. Look closely, or you might miss them: ghostly translucent circles, smaller than a pinkie nail, disappearing and reappearing as they drift through the liquid. Sliding back this door reveals a darkened room lined with identical vats of gently bubbling water, each illuminated by a row of dim lights. Deep within these corridors, if you can find it, is a wooden door marked not with a sign but rather a stuffed jellyfish made of felt and ribbons. By Lori Dajose (BS ’15)Ĭaltech’s Chen Neuroscience Research Building is a maze of pristine white hallways and white tile floors, long lab benches, and whirring machinery around every corner. How these ancient animals are helping unlock secrets of the body and planet.

Modern house with jellyfish tank