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Salk News


Salk Institute honored with historic gift from family of the late Francis Crick

LA JOLLA, CA—On the eve of the anniversary of the first polio vaccine, the Salk Institute was honored with a generous gift from Michael Crick, the son of the late Nobel laureate and Salk faculty member, Francis Crick.


Despite what you may think, your brain is a mathematical genius

LA JOLLA, CA—The irony of getting away to a remote place is you usually have to fight traffic to get there. After hours of dodging dangerous drivers, you finally arrive at that quiet mountain retreat, stare at the gentle waters of a pristine lake, and congratulate your tired self on having “turned off your brain.”


Salk Institute invites community to join 5K walk and first ever open house with exclusive lab tours

LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute is pleased to announce Step into Discovery, a day featuring the inaugural 5K Walk for Salk and Explore Salk, a free community open house offering behind-the-scenes tours of the world-renowned Institute.


Salk applauds Obama’s ambitious BRAIN Initiative to research human mind

LA JOLLA, CA—Salk neuroscientist Terrence J. Sejnowski joined President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., on April 2, 2013, at the launch of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative—a major Administration neuroscience effort that advances and builds upon collaborative scientific work by leading brain researchers such as Salk’s own Sejnowski.


Salk hosts James Watson to celebrate 60th anniversary of DNA discovery

LA JOLLA, CA—On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, James Watson, a legendary scientist who helped changed the history of molecular biology, spoke at the Salk Institute about his recent work in cancer research.


American Association for Cancer Research appoints Salk scientists to inaugural class of fellows

LA JOLLA, CA—The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the world’s oldest and largest professional organization dedicated to accelerating scientific progress to prevent and cure cancer, has selected four Salk scientists and two of the Institute’s nonresident fellows to be inducted in its first class of the fellows of the AACR Academy.


The neuroscience of finding your lost keys

LA JOLLA, CA—Ever find yourself racking your brain on a Monday morning to remember where you put your car keys?


Canker sore drug may aid in weight loss

LA JOLLA, CA—A team of scientists, including researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has discovered that a drug used to treat canker sores appears to reverse obesity in mice. The findings, published February 10 in Nature Medicine, may lead to new weight-loss medications that could have an impact on growing obesity and diabetes rates in the United States.
The drug, amlexanox, has been on the market for more than 15 years. Different formulations of the drug are used in Japan to treat asthma and in the United States to treat canker sores. Human clinical trials for weight loss are expected to begin later this year.


Hidden layer of genome unveils how plants may adapt to environments throughout the world

LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified patterns of epigenomic diversity that not only allow plants to adapt to various environments, but could also benefit crop production and the study of human diseases.


Remembering Ian Trowbridge

Ian Trowbridge, an esteemed researcher who had been a member of the Salk faculty for almost three decades, passed away on Wednesday, February 6.


Plants cut the mustard for basic discoveries in metabolism

LA JOLLA, CA—You might think you have nothing in common with mustard except hotdogs. Yet based on research in a plant from the mustard family, Salk scientists have discovered a possible explanation for how organisms, including humans, directly regulate chemical reactions that quickly adjust the growth of organs. These findings overturn conventional views of how different body parts coordinate their growth, shedding light on the development of more productive plants and new therapies for metabolic diseases.


Salk scientists use Amazon Cloud to view molecular machinery in remarkable detail

LA JOLLA, CA—In this week’s Nature Methods, Salk researchers share a how-to secret for biologists: code for Amazon Cloud that significantly reduces the time necessary to process data-intensive microscopic images.


Diabetes drug could hold promise for lung cancer patients

LA JOLLA, CA—Ever since discovering a decade ago that a gene altered in lung cancer regulated an enzyme used in therapies against diabetes, Reuben Shaw has wondered if drugs originally designed to treat metabolic diseases could also work against cancer.


Salk Institute awarded historic $42 million grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust

LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has received a $42 million gift-the largest in the Institute’s history-to establish the Helmsley Center for Genomic Medicine (HCGM), a research center dedicated to decoding the common genetic factors underlying many complex chronic human diseases.


Chromosome “anchors” organize DNA during cell division

LA JOLLA, CA—For humans to grow and to replace and heal damaged tissues, the body’s cells must continually reproduce, a process known as “cell division,” by which one cell becomes two, two become four, and so on. A key question of biomedical research is how chromosomes, which are duplicated during cell division so that each daughter cell receives an exact copy of a person’s genome, are arranged during this process.


More than 3,000 epigenetic switches control daily liver cycles

LA JOLLA, CA—When it’s dark, and we start to fall asleep, most of us think we’re tired because our bodies need rest. Yet circadian rhythms affect our bodies not just on a global scale, but at the level of individual organs, and even genes.


Salk scientists develop faster, safer method for producing stem cells

LA JOLLA, CA—A new method for generating stem cells from mature cells promises to boost stem cell production in the laboratory, helping to remove a barrier to regenerative medicine therapies that would replace damaged or unhealthy body tissues.


Two more Salk scientists elected as AAAS Fellows

LA JOLLA,CA—Salk faculty members Joseph Ecker and Joseph Noel have been named as 2012 Fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Election as an AAAS Fellow is among the highest honors in American science and scholars are selected by their peers for “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications,” according to election administrators.


Salk faculty members honored as recipients of new endowed chairs

LA JOLLA,CA—The Salk Institute announced today that professors Edward M. Callaway and Joseph Noel have been appointed to endowed chairs in acknowledgment of their outstanding contributions and dedication to scientific research.


Thomas D. Albright named president of Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture

LA JOLLA, CA—The first architecture critic may have been Goldilocks. She complained that some things were too big and some too small, while others were “just right.” Yet how do architects determine what is just right? And why do we feel instantly at home in some spaces, while never feeling right in others?