La Jolla, CA – Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified an important circuit in the spinal cord that controls the speed with which our leg muscles contract and relax. Their findings mark an important milestone in understanding the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements – one of the main obstacles in developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries.
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of QUALCOMM; Richard Freeman, president and chief operating officer of the San Diego Padres; and Ted Waitt, co-founder of Gateway, have been named to the positions of vice chair of the Salk Institute’s Board of Trustees. They join vice chair, Dr. Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes; and Jerry Kohlberg, chairman of the Board of Trustees, to form the upper echelon of board leadership for the Salk Institute.
La Jolla, CA – When HIV and other retroviruses invade a cell in the human body, a fierce battle ensues between the intruder and the cell’s defense team: members of the APOBEC family, a handful of closely related antiviral proteins that try to disarm the invading virus by scrambling its genetic information.
La Jolla, CA – Reading the DNA recipes of the 25,000 or so genes within a human cell, a process called transcription, is a highly scripted endeavor. Like the main character in a movie, an enzyme called RNA Polymerase plays the lead role and is supported by an ever-changing cast of supporting transcription factors that come and go as the script demands.
La Jolla, CA – Mutations in a protein, called APC, that normally functions to suppress the development of tumors, cause 85 percent of all colon cancers, the number two cancer killer in the US. For years, scientists thought they knew how: The normal APC protein destroys a protein called Β-catenin, which turns on genes responsible for cell growth. The mutant APC proteins that are commonly found in colon cancer and melanoma, are not able to destroy Β-catenin, leading to unchecked cell growth.
La Jolla, CA – Ravenous mice that chomp down as if there were no tomorrow yet stay lean and mean? Shutting down two genes that modulate a body’s energy balance transformed these animals into fidgeting, highly efficient fat burning machines, report scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in this week’s issue of Cell Metabolism.
La Jolla, CA – For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of the brain as it predicted the future location of a fast moving object in real time.
La Jolla, CA – Caryl D. Philips, a longtime supporter of graduate student training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and Michael Pulitzer, former chairman of a newspaper empire, recently were elected to the Institute’s Board of Trustees.
La Jolla, CA – A research scientist who recently discovered a critical message-relaying pathway that underlies the development of both cancer and type 2 diabetes, in January joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies as an assistant professor in the institute’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and Dulbecco Laboratory for Cancer Research.
La Jolla, CA – Previous studies have shown that undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells (hESC) can survive in the brains of laboratory rats with Parkinson’s disease. But until now it was unclear whether hESCs can become fully functional members of the host animal’s neuronal architecture – a basic necessity if stem cells are ever to be used in medical treatments replenishing missing or damaged neurons in human patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to protect the integrity of chromosomes. This finding solves for the first time an important question that has long puzzled scientists.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers have solved the three dimensional structure of the long thread-like fibers that fill the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. The structure reveals the proteins that make up the fibrils lock onto each other much like a zipper on a jacket. This advance, reported in the Nov. 14th early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), helps illuminate the molecular roots of Alzheimer’s and possibly other degenerative diseases of the brain.
La Jolla, CA – An unexpected twist to a discovery reported just two months ago may significantly improve our understanding about the molecular origins of diabetes.
La Jolla, CA – As part of its anniversary celebrations, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies will honor on Nov. 12, two individuals whose life work has taken very different approaches to helping humanity.
La Jolla, CA – Salk Institute molecular biologist Joanne Chory, Ph.D., an expert on how plants regulate their growth, has been elected a Fellow of the world’s largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
La Jolla, CA – Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D., who during his 27 years of research at the Salk Institute has made major discoveries about how hormones and drugs control the body’s metabolism, development and reproduction, has been honored with the prestigious Glenn T. Seaborg Medal, named for the Nobel laureate chemist who was an advisor to 10 U.S. Presidents.
La Jolla, CA – Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a crucial cellular signal that controls the fate of stem cells in the brains of adult mice.
La Jolla, CA – Increasing the activity of two enzymes better known for their role in oxidative stress metabolism turns normally relaxed mice into ‘Nervous Nellies,’ according to research conducted at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and reported in the early online edition of Nature.
La Jolla, CA – We often make unwise choices although we should know better. Thunderstorm clouds ominously darken the horizon. We nonetheless go out without an umbrella because we are distracted and forget. But do we? Neurobiologists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies carried out experiments that prove for the first time that the brain remembers, even if we don’t and the umbrella stays behind. They report their findings in the Oct. 20th issue of Neuron.
La Jolla, CA – Delving ever deeper into the intricate architecture of the brain, researchers at The Salk Institute have now described how two different types of nerve cells, called neurons, work together in tiny sub-networks to pass on just the right amount and the right kind of sensory information.
