La Jolla, CA – In times of plenty, the uni-cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum leads a solitary life munching on bacteria littering the forest floor. But these simple creatures can perform heroic developmental acts: when the bacterial food supply dries up, Dictyostelium amebas band together with their neighbors and form a multi-cellular tower designed to save the children.
La Jolla, CA – Using molecules involved in insect molting, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have created a laboratory method that can quickly turn off neurons in the brain and spinal cord of live animals - and can just as rapidly switch them back on.
La Jolla, CA – Whether newborn nerve cells in adult brains live or die depends on whether they can muscle their way into networks occupied by mature neurons. Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies pin-pointed the molecular survival gear required for a young neuron to successfully jump into the fray and hook up with other cells.
La Jolla, CA – Unlike the Three Musketeers who lived by the motto “All for one, one for all,” plant hormones prefer to do their own thing. For years, debate swirled around whether pathways activated by growth-regulating plant hormones converge on a central growth regulatory module. Now, the cooperation model is challenged by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. They show that each hormone acts largely independently in the Aug. 11 issue of Cell.
La Jolla, CA – Like most neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer’s disease usually appears late in life, raising the question of whether it is a disastrous consequence of aging or if the toxic protein aggregates that cause the disease simply take a long time to form.
La Jolla, CA – A natural chemical that has been ignored by researchers largely because of the runaway success of the blockbuster statin drugs may in fact yield a rare twofer: a prime target for novel cholesterol-lowering drugs and the blueprint for a new generation of antibiotics that can take down Streptococcus pneumonia and Staphylococcus aureus.
La Jolla, CA – Satchidananda Panda, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He is one of only 15 researchers in the country to receive the honor this year. The distinction comes with a $240,000 award provided over four years to support his research on the molecular basis of circadian timekeeping mechanisms in mammals.
La Jolla, CA – Despite their celebrated “immortality,” the capacity of embryonic stem (ES) cells for endless division has its limits. After a very extended childhood spent dividing in a culture dish, even stem cells tend to grow up and assume adult roles as workaday nerve, muscle, or blood cells, never to return to their youthful state.
La Jolla, CA – Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a novel pathway that regulates the body’s ability to store or burn fat, a discovery that suggests new ways to reduce obesity, diabetes and other fat-related human diseases.
La Jolla, CA – During embryonic development, nerve cells hesitantly extend tentacle-like protrusions called axons that sniff their way through a labyrinth of attractive and repulsive chemical cues that guide them to their target.
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Martyn Goulding, an associate professor in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been awarded the prestigious Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences for his groundbreaking research on the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements.
La Jolla, CA – Wiring the developing brain is like creating a topiary garden. Shrubs don’t automatically assume the shape of ornamental elephants, and neither do immature nerve cells immediately recognize the “right” target cell. Abundant foliage, either vegetal or neuronal, must first sprout and then be sculpted into an ordered structure.
La Jolla, CA – For the first time, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have demonstrated that cell-cell contacts in the brain play an active role in processing information: called synapses, these interfaces act as precise filters that sense and amplify meaningful information, Salk researchers report in the current issue of PLoS Biology, available online.
La Jolla, CA – When Robert Burns compared his love to a red, red rose, he definitely wasn’t referring to a topless mutant. That’s because rather than being topped by a lovely, fragrant bloom, a rose mutant in the gene known as TOPLESS would be crowned by a homely second root.
La Jolla, CA – A collaboration between scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Pasteur Institute in Paris has uncovered the molecular signals that trigger maturation of natural killer cells, an important group of immune system cells, into fully armed killing machines. Their findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of Nature Immunology.
La Jolla, CA – Neurons in the brain and spinal cord come in two flavors, excitatory neurons that transmit and amplify signals, and inhibitory neurons that inhibit and refine those signals. Although investigators have long appreciated that these two classes of neurons exist in the central nervous system, little is known about how cells decide to become inhibitory or excitatory during embryonic development. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have now uncovered a pathway that plays a central role in regulating this choice.
La Jolla, CA – It doesn’t take John Wayne’s deliberate, pigeon-toed swagger or Marilyn Monroe’s famously wiggly sway to judge a person’s gender based on the way they move. People are astonishingly accurate when asked to judge the gender of walking human figures, even when they are represented by 15 small dots of light attached to major joints of the body.
La Jolla, CA – When given extra shots of the plant steroid brassinolide, plants “pump up” like major league baseball players do on steroids. Tracing brassinolide’s signal deep into the cell’s nucleus, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have unraveled how the growth-boosting hormone accomplishes its job at the molecular level.
La Jolla, CA – The brain, that exquisite network of billions of communicating cells, starts to take form with the genesis of nerve cells. Most newborn nerve cells, also called neurons, must travel from their birthplace to the position they will occupy in the adult brain. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a molecule expressed on the surface of certain migrating neurons that helps them find their correct position along on the way.
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Irwin Jacobs, QUALCOMM co-founder, has been named chairman-elect of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies’ Board of Trustees. Dr. Jacobs will assume his new role in November when current chairman Jerry Kohlberg retires.
