La Jolla, CA – Tatyana Sharpee, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Computational Biology, has been named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. She will receive a grant of $50,000 for a two-year period.
La Jolla, CA – Controlled by a tightly regulated choreography that determines what should go up and what should go down, plants develop along a polar axis with a root on one end and a shoot on the other.
La Jolla, CA – The Vilcek Foundation has named Salk professor Dr. Inder Verma as the recipient of its 2008 prize in biomedical science. The honor is awarded annually to foreign-born individuals for their extraordinary contributions to society in the United States.
La Jolla, CA – Boosted by physical and mental exercise, neural stem cells continue to sprout new neurons throughout life, but the exact function of these newcomers has been the topic of much debate. Removing a genetic master switch that maintains neural stem cells in their proliferative state finally gave researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies some definitive answers.
La Jolla, CA – A gift of $11.5 million has been received on behalf of the Nomis Foundation, a European foundation being established by G.H. “Heini” Thyssen, a long-time friend and Trustee of the Salk Institute, to fund appointments for new investigators specialized in microbial pathogenesis and viral and cellular immunology. The gift, which will launch the Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis program, fulfills a critical component of the Institute’s strategic scientific plan.
La Jolla, CA – Ipsen (Euronext:FR0010259150; IPN) and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies announced today that they will be signing a memorandum of understanding setting the framework for the creation of the Ipsen Life Sciences Program at the Salk Institute. The mission of the partnership is to advance knowledge in the field of proliferative and degenerative diseases through fundamental and applied biology research.
La Jolla, CA – Early stage breast cancer that has not yet invaded the surrounding tissues may already contain highly motile cells, which brings the tumor one step closer to metastasis, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
La Jolla, CA – Cells keep a close watch over the transcriptome – the totality of all parts of the genome that are expressed in any given cell at any given time. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Missouri-Kansas City teamed up to peel back another layer of transcriptional regulation and gain new insight into how genomes work.
La Jolla, CA – Suppressing a cellular cleanup-mechanism known as autophagy can accelerate the accumulation of protein aggregates that leads to neural degeneration. In an upcoming issue of Autophagy, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report for the first time that the opposite is true as well: Boosting autophagy in the nervous system of fruit flies prevented the age-dependent accumulation of cellular damage in neurons and promoted longevity.
La Jolla, CA – The Salk Institute for Biological Studies today announced the appointment of Rebecca Newman to the position of Vice President of Development. She will oversee the Institute’s entire fundraising program and will lead all related strategic planning and donor relation activities. Newman officially starts in February.
La Jolla, CA – Like a circuit breaker that prevents electrical wiring from overheating and bringing down the house, a tiny family of three molecules stops the immune system from mounting an out-of-control, destructive inflammatory response against invading pathogens, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found.
La Jolla, CA – Salk scientists Leanne Jones and Lei Wang today were awarded New Faculty Awards totaling 5.3 million by the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The funds will be split between both researchers over the next five years.
La Jolla, CA – Cells cultured in the lab are like a fish out of water. Often, their behavior does not reflect their biological function within an entire organ or organism, which, for example, turns studying human liver cells into a big challenge.
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Andrew Dillin, an assistant professor in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been selected for the 2007 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award. He will receive $300,000 over a three-year period to study “age-associated neuroprotection by insulin/IGF-1 signaling.”
La Jolla, CA – Newly launched nerve cells in a growing embryo must chart their course to distant destinations, and many of the means they use to navigate have yet to surface. In a study published in the current issue of the journal Neuron, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have recovered a key signal that guides motor neurons – the nascent cells that extend from the spinal cord and must find their way down the length of limbs such as arms, wings and legs.
LA JOLLA, CA—Professors Ursula Bellugi, Walter Eckhart and Greg E. Lemke have been awarded the distinction of AAAS Fellow, an honor that is bestowed upon members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by their peers.
La Jolla, CA – Salk scientist Leslie Orgel, Ph.D., who dedicated much of his career to the study of how life began on Earth roughly 4 billion years ago, died on October 27 from pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.
La Jolla, CA – When the genetic material inside a cell’s nucleus starts to fall apart, a protein called ATM takes charge and orchestrates the rescue mission. Surprisingly, for ATM to kick into full gear, the stretches of DNA flanking a chromosomal break are just as important as the damaged site itself, report scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
La Jolla, CA – The Cajal Club has selected Dennis O’Leary, professor in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, to receive the 2007 Krieg Cortical Discoverer Prize for his outstanding research on the mechanisms guiding the functional organization of the cerebral cortex, the brain’s powerful central processing unit responsible for higher brain functions.
La Jolla, CA – A stem cells’ immediate neighborhood, a specialized environment also known as the stem cell niche, provides crucial support needed for stem cell maintenance. But nothing lasts forever, found scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. During the aging process, the level of support drops off, diminishing the stem cells’ ability to replenish themselves (self-renew) indefinitely.