LA JOLLA–An insect lands on your arm, moving the tiny hairs on your skin just enough to make you want to scratch. Salk Institute researchers have uncovered evidence of a dedicated neural pathway that transmits the itchy feeling triggered by such a light touch.
LA JOLLA–The brain cells of patients with bipolar disorder, characterized by severe swings between depression and elation, are more sensitive to stimuli than other people’s brain cells, researchers have discovered.
LA JOLLA–Scientists have discovered a previously unknown wellspring of genetic diversity in humans, chimps and most other primates. This diversity arises from a new component of itinerant sections of genetic code known as jumping genes.
LA JOLLA–As food demands rise to unprecedented levels, farmers are in a race against time to grow plants that can withstand environmental challenges–infestation, climate change and more. Now, new research at the Salk Institute, published in Science on October 23, 2015, reveals details into a fundamental mechanism of how plants manage their energy intake, which could potentially be harnessed to improve yield.
LA JOLLA–Scientists have unraveled how mutant molecules damage the nervous system of people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a group of disorders that hinder people’s ability to move and feel sensation in their hands and feet, according to a paper published October 21, 2015 in Nature.
LA JOLLA–Salk Fellows Dmitry Lyumkis and Patrick Hsu are among 16 scientists nationwide to receive the Director’s Early Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award supports junior scientists in their efforts to pursue innovative approaches to major contemporary challenges in biomedical research. Established in 2011, the Early Independence Award is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which encourages paradigm-shifting research projects that are inherently risky and untested.
LA JOLLA–The Society for Neuroscience (SfN), an organization of nearly 40,000 scientists and clinicians, will award the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience to Terrence Sejnowski, Salk professor and head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory.
LA JOLLA–Salk Institute scientist Janelle Ayres has received an award of $500,000 over two years from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to further her research on bolstering a person’s microbiome to help their body overcome an infection. The award comes with the possibility of an additional $500,000 for a third year.
LA JOLLA–For the first time, scientists can use skin samples from older patients to create brain cells without rolling back the youthfulness clock in the cells first. The new technique, which yields cells resembling those found in older people’s brains, will be a boon to scientists studying age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
LA JOLLA–As part of a $120 million, 5-year initiative to understand the cell’s nucleus, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $30 million to San Diego researchers, including the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). Salk Associate Professor Clodagh O’Shea has been awarded a grant of $3 million over 5 years, along with the possibility of tapping into an additional opportunity pool of $3 million each year for the period.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of bioengineer Patrick Hsu in the innovative Salk Fellows Program. Hsu, who hails from Harvard University and MIT’s Broad Institute, aims to develop the next generation of medical therapeutics by harnessing the gene editing technology known as CRISPR. A gene editing technique originally derived from bacterial immune systems, CRISPR has recently made headlines for its use in modifying DNA with unprecedented ease and accuracy.
LA JOLLA–Breakfast, lunch and dinner? For too many of us, the three meals of the day go more like: morning meeting pastry, mid-afternoon energy drink and midnight pizza. In Cell Metabolism on September 24, Salk Institute scientists present daily food and beverage intake data collected from over 150 participants of a mobile research app over three weeks. They show that a majority of people eat for 15 hours or longer, with less than a quarter of the day’s calories being consumed before noon and over a third consumed after 6 p.m.
LA JOLLA-The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $13 million grant over five years to develop and disseminate new stem cell-based technologies and assays for studying autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other mental health diseases to a consortium of researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, working in tandem with leaders in the biotechnology sector.
LA JOLLA–Since the early 19th century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of olfaction, our sense of smell.
LA JOLLA–By measuring how worms move toward an appealing, food-like scent, researchers at the Salk Institute were able to predict whether the worms would be long-lived. The finding, published September 22, 2015 in the journal eLife, shows how nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) process information about the environment and how circuits in the brain change as an animal ages.
Salk scientists John Reynolds, Ursula Bellugi and Alan Saghatelian have been honored with the dedication of three endowed chairs in acknowledgement of their outstanding contributions and dedication to scientific research. Bellugi and Reynolds were named inaugural holders of the Salk Founders’ Chair and Fiona and Sanjay Jha Chair in Neuroscience, respectively. Saghatalian was named holder of the Dr. Frederik Paulsen Chair in Neuroscience.
LA JOLLA–Aging is typically thought of as the gradual decline of the whole body, but new research shows that age affects organs in strikingly different ways. A study published September 17, 2015 in Cell Systems provides the first comprehensive view of how cellular proteins age in different organs, revealing major differences between the liver and brain in young and old rats. The findings suggest that how an organ ages may depend on its unique cellular properties and its physiological function in the body.
LA JOLLA–Salk scientists have developed a new way to selectively activate brain, heart, muscle and other cells using ultrasonic waves. The new technique, dubbed sonogenetics, has some similarities to the burgeoning use of light to activate cells in order to better understand the brain.
LA JOLLA–The Salk Institute is pleased to announce the election of Edwin K. Hunter, a longtime supporter of the Institute and president of Hunter, Hunter & Sonnier, LLC, to its Board of Trustees. The Board voted on the appointment August 28.
LA JOLLA–A single stem cell has the potential to generate an animal made of millions of different types of cells. Some cancers contain stem-like but abnormal cells that can act like mini factories to rapidly churn out not only more copies of themselves, but also variants that are able to better survive in the challenging and changing environments to which cancers are exposed. Worse still, these stem cell-like cancers can spread to other tissues in the body, causing metastasis.
